


To Look Behind the Mirror

by Jingting



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Death Note, Hunters & Hunting, Magic, Magical Accidents, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pranks and Practical Jokes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2019-06-01 07:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 54,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15138578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jingting/pseuds/Jingting
Summary: When Thorin Oakenshield and Company depart from Bag End, they are joined by a wild, unpredictable, curious, fierce and fiery magical being. Can she get them all the way to the Lonely Mountain in fifteen pieces? Can they fulfil their quest and take back their Mountain?And if they do, can she find a home and a people to call hers?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Author's Note  
> So, this is my first fanfiction and I'd like to say a few things. Feel free to skip ahead to the beginning of the story.  
> First of all, I only own my OC. Everything else in this story goes to their respective owners.  
> Second, English isn't my native language, so please excuse me for any mistakes. If you find them, do tell me. I want to improve my writing.  
> Lastly, although I do intend to finish this fic, I won't promise regular updates. I have it all planned in my head, but getting it out proves challenging. Reviews might accelerate the process ;)  
> That's it, so let's get started!

**Prologue**

He grunted as he pushed a branch aside, making his way through the forest of Fangorn and over to the huge willow where he knew he'd find her.

The Elves had told him she'd notified them a few years ago she would be living at the biggest willow in Fangorn, but as she was unpredictable and didn't always bother to let the world know her plans, he couldn't be sure he'd be able to find her. Fortunately, it soon turned out he needn't have worried, as he had heard a soft voice inside his head after having sent out an enchanted whistle into the air to make sure she was even there.

 ** _"Gandalf,"_** she'd (for lack of a better word) said. **"L** ** _ong time no see."_**

 _"About five years,"_ he'd thought back, knowing she could hear his thoughts, though he could feel she hadn't pushed on to his feelings and memories as she (usually) considered this impolite.

 ** _"Come to the willow. I'll meet you there,"_** she'd said, before separating their connection and leaving him alone.

He smiled to himself. She had never cared much for subtlety, a result, he suspected, from her surviving on her own for most of her life.

As his current activity required nothing more from him than stomping along the trees and occasionally swatting branches and leaves away with his staff, he had plenty of time to let his thoughts drift back to about a week earlier, when he had met a rather grumpy royal outcast: Thorin, son of Thráin, son of Thrór, rightful King under the Mountain, though you'd never have guessed from the looks of him. Wet from the rain and dusty from the long and fruitless journey behind him, the dark-haired Dwarf had sat himself at a table in the middle of the inn, ordered a simple dinner from the waitress passing and sighed to himself, staring into the fire. That was when Gandalf had deemed it time to approach.

As he walked over the wet grass, he thought back to that evening, when the quest to retake Erebor from the Dragon had begun to take form.

_After a few minutes of arguing, he finally manages to convince the Dwarf to attempt to take back his homeland. Upon Thorin's protest that he needs the Arkenstone to rally the seven Dwarven armies to his cause, the Wizard politely asks to be allowed to make a few suggestions concerning the soon to be formed Company. Thorin doesn't say anything, so Gandalf starts with the Burglar._

_"_ _One is a Hobbit. You may have heard of them, simple folk, living simple lives not far from here. Yet of this particular Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins is his name, I have reason to suspect he will prove himself useful during the journey. I would urge you to employ him as our Burglar."_

_Thorin does not look convinced at all, but doesn't complain. He probably saves his judgement for when he meets this Hobbit, although he has heard of them, and what he has heard did not impress him. Then he remembers the Wizard used 'a few suggestions'. He looks suspiciously at Gandalf, who merely smiles at him, and finally says, "Who else?"_

_"_ _Ah, well, my second suggestion, we never really found out what exactly she is. But-"_

_He is immediately interrupted by an angry Thorin: "She? You're suggesting we take a woman with us? Whom we will have to protect all the way? Have you lost your mind?! I will not-"_

_He is silenced by a sharp look from the Wizard, who does not appreciate having his intellect questioned._

_"_ _Listen, Thorin. She is female, yes, but not your run-of-the-mill lady. Magic flows through her veins, and surely you can understand that a little magic won't hurt if you plan on leading a Company through hostile lands. Trust me on this, and if you don't, please save your judgement for when you meet her, or rather, the both of them."_

_Upon the Dwarf's sarcastic remark that he always thought Wizards were the ones to turn to when it came to magic, Gandalf simply states: "There is magic, and then there is magic."_

He pushed aside an especially stubborn branch and suddenly found himself at the edge of a lake, shining red in the light of the setting sun. Right in front of him stood a monstrous willow. Thick branches seemed to twist randomly (although he knew she must have influenced them to make the tree grow more to her liking), creating an enormous network of intertwining branches. In a few places, the branches had winded tightly around each other around an imaginary circle, creating dry, cosy holes, large enough for her to sleep in. He slowly approached the tree, wondering where she could be, when that question was answered by a loud, high-pitched roar, signalling her arrival.

He turned to the right and was able to make out her form rising from the water. While she soared towards him, he couldn't help but notice she seemed to have gotten bigger since the last time he saw her. Had she then been the size of a large dog, now she was almost as big as a pony. Good, it meant she would be the same height as the Dwarves.

He remembered having met her while staying with the Elves, years ago. She never told anyone where she had come from, simply wandering into Rivendell one day and asking questions about everything. The Elves, ever hospitable, had welcomed her and she soon turned out to be much more than a strange twist of nature. Her like had never been seen before on this Earth. One of the Elves had once described her as having 'the lethal grace of a panther, the loyalty of a wolf and the fire of a dragon' and these animals could also be used to describe her appearance. She could be suspicious, headstrong, and, when provoked, highly dangerous, but he knew that inside, she was friendly and endlessly curious about anything and everything.

The problem was, of course, that she was way too powerful a force to be wandering around uncontrolled. Eventually, he would have to convince her to play a more prominent role in Middle-Earth, but he knew better than to confront or force her. So instead, he had decided that taking her along on a trip with thirteen Dwarves, a Hobbit and himself would serve as the perfect opportunity to get her used to duty and obligation. Besides, he was certain she would come in handy one way or another.

She had now reached the shore and, barely moving her large, dragon-like wings, landed on the lowest, almost horizontal branch of the willow. Folding her creamy white wings, several shades lighter than the rest of her body, but keeping them a little open in order to keep her balance on the branch, Skyfire's deep, golden eyes looked straight into his.


	2. One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @Memo: Thanks for the review!
> 
> Here's chapter one,   
> Enjoy!

**1**

Quiet as an owl, she landed in a tree with a clear view of Hobbiton. Making sure to blend in with the shadows of the tree, she surveyed the quiet holes and the well-kept gardens until she found the door Gandalf had described. It was a green one, but what mostly interested her was the oddly blue glowing letter 'F' that had been placed on it. Figuring that must be the one where she had to be, she jumped from the branch she had been perching on and glided silently over to the hole, landing smoothly on top of it. Immediately, she vanished her wings, changed her colour in order to blend in with the dewed grass that covered the hole's roof and curled up just above the door. Lying flat on her belly, she paused for a moment and pricked up her ears, while at the same time looking out with her mind at the Hobbit below her, looking and listening for any sign that she had been spotted. With a small surge of relief, she convinced herself that Hobbiton was as quiet as it had been a minute ago and that the inhabitant of this particular hole continued radiating calmness and contentment as he prepared his supper.

Sure, had it been day, she wouldn't have been able to hide like this, but as the dusk had almost passed into night, her camouflage would suffice. Besides, if there was one thing she had learned in her life, it was that people rarely saw something they weren't expecting to see.

And they never, _ever_ , looked up.

Fine, two things then.

Judging it safe, she moved around a bit to get comfortable, curling her long tail around her until she could use the furry knob on the end as a pillow to lean her head against. She knew she was up for a bit of a wait and, trusting her ears to warn her in time when the first Dwarves would show up, went over everything Gandalf had told her a few days ago one last time.

_She sits down in front of him and asks him what it was he wants to talk to her about. Gandalf walks her to a rock on the lakeshore and, after seating himself on it and letting out a sigh, commences with a lengthy talk._

_He begins with a story about Dwarves, gold, gems and jewels. About a King whose love of gold had grown too deep and the sickness that had begun to grow within him. Eventually, about a dragon. About ruin, death and destruction. About a people without a home, ever seeking revenge on the dragon that had chased them out of their Mountain._

_After having described the Blue Mountains in which they were now (temporarily) living, he pauses. She waits a decent amount of time, waiting for him to continue. When it becomes obvious he isn't going to, she says: "Lovely story, but I assume you didn't come all this way to tell me a tale. I don't see how this is all related to me."_

_She thinks she senses a faint whiff of contentment, but she can't be sure._

_The Wizard continues by telling her about the King of these Dwarves, Thorin Oakenshield. Though he does not say it out loud, Gandalf hints at him being the one who convinced Thorin to lead a Company to the Lonely Mountain and reclaim the Arkenstone (apparently a jewel needed to convince other Dwarves to join him, though she has never really understood the value of jewels, as they did not have a fae). And that, he says, is where she comes in._

_She listens closely. He invites her to join said Company, in order to help the Company reach the Mountain. Knowing exactly what he needs to say to convince her, he barely hides a grin while saying this would be a wonderful opportunity to satisfy her insatiable curiosity about Dwarves and other things along the road._

Of course, she thought, there was no way she could have said no to that prospect. And, after having experienced the Dwarves up close and probably having had her fill of adventure for a while, she had already decided her next place to stay: Hobbiton. Even before having seen it, it had sounded like the perfect place to recover from exhausting adventures, while at the same time stirring a bit of life into the place.

There was one problem though. Gandalf had carefully explained that Dwarves were not fond of dragons, especially these particular Dwarves. Personally, she did not share that opinion at all, and had gotten rather excited at the prospect of seeing one. After all, she probably looked more like a dragon than any other creature she knew of.

Gandalf had managed to grab her attention again and his next words had cleared the joy right out of her mind. He feared, that if she showed herself with all her dragonish features, Thorin would be too blinded by his hatred for dragons to get a balanced opinion of her and would probably expel her from the Company without a second thought. So, he had (after much discussion) struck a deal with her. She wouldn't reveal herself fully until the first plains after Bree, and then he would do all he could to convince Thorin to give her a chance.

The reason she was currently lying on the roof instead of going in, was that Gandalf had decided it would be best for her to get a general idea of the Dwarves before they saw her. And he'd told her to wait for him to introduce her, for she looked so odd there might be panic if she strolled through the door without any preparation. So, she waited for the Wizard to arrive.

She was just trying to find some solace by telling herself that, although she wouldn't be allowed to let it out for a while, her fire still burned inside her, when she was shaken out of her thoughts by heavy footsteps.

The heavy _thumps_ stood out from the peaceful evening chorus of crickets chirping, cows mooing and the river running. Squinting her eyes, she tried to make out the shape of the Dwarf lumbering towards her. Even with her good night vision, she couldn't get a good look at him until he was less than five meters away from his destination.

It would have been easier to know who she was dealing with, if she could have used her mind to look. But as she knew lowering the boundaries of her mind would cause her eyes and the tips of her ears to glow in the dark, that wasn't an option. So she used her other senses instead. The Dwarf looked sturdy and straightforward. He smelled like a warrior, of sweat and blood, a scent that made her snout ripple and she had to keep back a soft growl. _Later into the night,_ she reminded herself, _you'll be able to get a good look at him with your mind. Until then, don't judge._

By now, the warrior-Dwarf had reached the green front door and, after having convinced himself that it was the right one by checking out the blue 'F', rang the bell. After a few moments, she heard the door open.

"Dwalin, at your service," she heard the Dwarf say.

After a pause, she heard the rustling of fabric and the Hobbit stuttering, "Uh…Bilbo Baggins, at – at yours."

As the Dwarf stomped into the hole, she heard Bilbo Baggins stammering, in an utterly perplexed voice:, "Do – do we know each other?"

She caught the Dwarf's answer: a simple "No", spoken as if Dwalin found it a rather preposterous question. She chuckled quietly, having a vague idea that not everyone had been informed there would be a meeting here tonight.

After the second Dwarf, a wise and friendly looking (and smelling) one with a long white beard, who introduced himself as Balin, that suspicion had gotten even stronger. At Balin's "At your service", instead of the correct "At yours", all she heard was a "Good evening". She had to give it to Balin; he reacted to the impoliteness with a friendly "Yes, it is. Although I think it might rain later" followed by "Am I late?"

"Late for what?" Bilbo asked. Clearly, Gandalf had not told him there would be a number of Dwarves standing on his doorstep. She wondered if he had told him she would come. She doubted it.

As she listened to the noises of Balin and Dwalin greeting each other (did they have to be so loud?), she kept waiting for Gandalf to arrive. Up next came two Dwarves at once. After the door opened she heard a small desperate whimper come from Bilbo, although she doubted anyone else heard. The two Dwarves now standing in front of Bilbo introduced themselves as "Fíli"(fair) and "Kíli"(dark), before bowing in unison with yet another "At your service".

"You must be Mr. Boggins!" Kíli said with a broad smile, but clearly the Hobbit had somewhat recovered from his initial shock and was growing bolder.

"Nope, you can't come in, you've come to the wrong house," he declared at once and made to shut the door. Sadly for him, Dwarves were a lot stronger than Hobbits and these two also seemed relatively young. They pushed the door back open without too much trouble, much to the Hobbit's bewilderment.

"What? Has it been cancelled?" Kíli demanded.

"No one told us," Fíli added, with a side-glance at who she now realized was probably his brother.

"Canc- No, nothing has been cancelled!" Bilbo said, starting to sound positively pissed off.

"That's a relief," Kíli said, before shoving the poor Hobbit aside. He and his brother marched into the hole without a second glance.

Listening to the ever louder growing noises inside, she started to get impatient and her belly rumbled. _If that Wizard doesn't show up soon, I'm going in to eat, introduction be damned_ , she thought. And she would have, had she not, at that moment, heard a commotion in the dark.

She pricked up her ears to hear a mass of Dwarves approaching the hole, with Gandalf trailing behind them. They made their way towards the door, their steps loud enough to wake up half of Hobbiton and the other half by their grunting and groaning. When they had reached the green door, they rang the bell. But instead of waiting until the door opened, they evidently decided Bilbo was taking too long and started a conversation of their own. Leaning against the door, they all toppled in front of Bilbo after he'd pulled, or rather, jerked the door open.

Hearing a lot of "Get off me!" and other, less polite comments, she chanced a peek and peered over the edge and into the hallway. Seeing eight Dwarves lying in front of the shocked Hobbit, she burst into laughter before muffling it by putting her forepaws over her snout. Fortunately, thanks to the amount of Dwarvish cursing in the hole, no one heard but Gandalf, who, upon seeing her shaking with supressed laughter, shot her a stern look before relenting. He gave a quick nod before stepping back.

"Before you all run to dinner," the Wizard addressed the Dwarves, who were getting to their feet, "I would like to introduce someone else."

Finally, having mastered her laughter, she opened her mind once again and took a second to take in the familiar feeling. Then, she lowered herself upside down from the roof and gazed into the hole.


	3. Two

****

**2**

Their first impression of Skyfire were two large, curious purple eyes, looking at them while hanging upside down from the roof. Then she pulled back up and leapt gracefully down, turning to face them.

No one spoke. The only sound came from inside, as Dwalin, Balin, Fíli and Kíli came to the door, surprised by the sudden silence. Upon seeing her standing in the garden, they too fell silent.

In front of them stood the strangest creature any of them had ever seen. A head like a wolf's, although with longer, narrower ears and bright, expressive eyes. Her neck was covered in light sandy-coloured mane, which ran all the way down her shoulders and chest, before making way for a long, beige, slender body. Her feet closest resembled those of a cat, although with longer thumbs, which were vertical and did not make contact with the ground. As they continued staring, she swished a long tail with a furry knob on the end from side to side. All came together as a wild, odd, and unmistakably intelligent being.

A Dwarf with a two-pointed hat was the first to find his voice: "This- This is the extra magic you told us about?!"

She wheeled to face Gandalf, glaring at him. "Why did you tell them about me but not the other way around?"

Before Gandalf could answer, another voice was heard: "A female?!"

Turning back to the crowd, she saw Kíli had spoken. Her eyes changed from the orange of a sunset to a deep, dangerous red, causing everyone to jump. If there was one thing she hated, it was being judged by her gender. She turned her ears backwards, baring her teeth, while making a soft grumbling sound deep in her chest. It wasn't enough to appear outright threatening, but there was little doubt she could if she wanted to.

Gandalf, who was still standing behind her, discreetly pushed the bottom of his staff to her thigh.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. Her eyes changed from red to silver, before turning white, with black holes for pupils. She opened her mind so they could all hear her thoughts. The tips of her ears glowed white, and they heard: **"** ** _Yes. And yes."_**

They looked at her open-mouthed, for she hadn't moved her mouth in the slightest. Yet they all heard her voice.

"What are you doing?" a brown-haired Dwarf asked whose eyebrows had been braided to be part of his hairstyle.

**_"What does it look like I'm doing, I'm speaking to you through my mind."_ **

Her soundless way of communicating seemed to unsettle them, so she decided to switch back to audible communication. Her eyes changed back to their original purple. Ignoring the shocked gazes she felt burning, she turned to their host for the evening. "Skyfire, at your service," she said while lowering her head in what could be considered a respectful bow.

She waited politely for a reply.

When it became clear after a few seconds nothing could be expected from the Hobbit, who just stared at her with his mouth hanging open, giving the impression of a gloomy cave, she asked, "May I come in?"

That seemed to shake him out of his stupor at least a bit, for he moved aside so she could enter. She walked calmly past him, opening her mind so he felt her tranquillity radiating off her as she passed. Then she turned her thoughts to more important business: "You did leave something for the latecomers, did you?" she said, looking at the four Dwarves who had entered the hole first. They all gaped back at her. "Which way is dinner? I'm starving!" she continued, hearing her belly rumble in agreement.

At last, Fíli stepped aside, showing her the way. She hurried past him, following her nose towards the pantry which the first four Dwarves had begun to pillage. They all came after her. Once there, she tried getting to the shelves without bumping into things, but this proved to be a problem. She thought it better not to use magic for a moment, since the Dwarves were shocked enough already, not to mention the Hobbit, who looked ready to faint.

She tried, but her body was not made to carry stuff in such a cramped space. She was just too big to be able to walk around without knocking something (or someone) over every time she turned. After accidentally bumping into a grey-bearded Dwarf who seemed too deaf to hear any of her apologies, she decided to take a break in the hallway.

She sat down and let out a deep sigh. _Thank Goodness we'll be on the road tomorrow, I don't think I could live in this crowded place. Hopefully, the mountain will be roomier._ She listened to the sounds of the Dwarves transferring food from the pantry to the table and the Hobbit's futile attempts to prevent them to. Then some distant thumping caught her attention. It seemed to be coming from the cellar. She frowned and looked down with her mind. She spotted a number of faer there, but the biggest ones by far were two Dwarven ones. Carefully, she pushed a little further, trying not to let them notice her, until she managed to discern names: Fíli and Kíli.

She filled up the pads inside her soles, allowing her to sneak, silent as a cat, towards the stairs that lead down the cellar. A meter away, she changed the colour of her fur and eyes to match that of the darkness in front of her. Then she crept slowly forward until she could peer down into the cellar. Thanks to her good night vision, she was able to make out Fíli and Kíli trying to lift a barrel of what smelled like ale. Seeing how they would have to lift it off the ground and up the stairs, she thought, _They could ask for help_.

* * *

Kíli wiped the sweat off his forehead, taking a break from lifting the heavy barrel. Since there were now ten Dwarves walking back and forth between the Hobbit's dining room and his pantry, they had thought it a bit crowded and had decided to get the drinks rather than the food. So they looked around the hole and found the cellar, with some barrels of ale in it. After having taken the liberty of inspecting the ale, they were now trying to get it off the ground. The barrel turned out more difficult to move than expected. They hadn't even expected to find it here, as the Hobbit hadn't struck them as someone who held regular drinking parties. Or held parties at all, for that matter.

Fíli raised his head from behind the barrel and glared at his brother. "Do you mind helping?"

Kíli rolled his eyes, but reached out to grab the barrel again. As the two Dwarves struggled to get the barrel off the ground, they heard a soft snort.

The latest guest to their party tonight was standing in the doorway at the top of the stairs that led down into the cellar. She looked down at them with light brown eyes.

"You know," she said, "there is an easier way to do this."

Fíli was not in a good mood. The barrel was heavier than he had anticipated and now this strange creature was mocking them. So no one could blame him for saying: "And I suppose you would know this better way?" in a slightly patronising voice.

She was tempted to leave them to stew in their own juices, but if she did the barrel, and subsequently supper, would take ages. And she was getting impatient already. So, she simply flicked her tail, the knob on the end of it lit op and the barrel rose from the ground, wobbling a little in mid-air.

The two Dwarves gaped at the barrel in astonishment. For a moment they seemed too flabbergasted to speak. She gestured with her head, making the barrel float up the stairs without visible propulsion. It was followed by two very perplexed Dwarves. When they reached the top of the stairs, she and the floating barrel were waiting for them. They now noticed the knob on the end of her tail was glowing with a bright white light.

"What are you doing?" Kíli asked, voicing his and his brother's thoughts.

"I'm helping you. I saw you were having trouble getting it off the ground, so I took the liberty of doing so my way."

Fíli snorted, "We could have lifted it ourselves, you know. Easily."

She looked sarcastically at them. "Yeah, I saw. But this is a lot faster. Save your lifting for the next months, it'll be more use then," she said. "So, shall we join the others? I'm starving."

A little less stunned, they agreed, and insisted on pushing the barrel, so as to have at least some semblance of them doing the work. She liked them already.

"So, Fíli and Kíli, right?" she asked, as they took a right turn to the storage, in order to avoid the crowded pantry. There wouldn't be much space to squeeze either her or the barrel through there, not with Dwarves all over the place.

The two Dwarves gaped at her, eyes wide open. She could see them racking their brains to see whether they had slipped their names to her, and finding they hadn't.

"Did…did you hear that with your mind?" Fíli asked, eyebrows raised.

"No, I just eavesdropped."

"When?"

"When you came in."

She saw Kíli was ready to interrogate on, but now they had reached the dining room. _How am I going to fit in there?_ "Where do you want it?" she asked.

"Over there would be fine," Fíli replied, ignoring the open-mouthed gapes at the floating barrel. Her tail shone a bit brighter, and the barrel floated across the table and settled next to the fire. She followed it. Deciding she wouldn't squeeze herself along the table, she clambered over it, knocking over some mugs and plates in the process. Finally settled, she made up her mind not to leave her spot for the remainder of dinner.

Once they were all seated and the food on the table had her mouth watering, Kíli started again.

"But how did you hear us? There was no one around but us and our host over there," he said, pointing at the Hobbit who was looking miserably at the feast from the sidelines.

"I was lying on top of the hole," she said, trying to grab a very appealing tomato a meter away on the table.

"But why didn't we see you? It wasn't that dark and you're kind of…eye-catching?"

She couldn't reach the tomato. She huffed in annoyance, careful not to give her fire away, and lit up her tail again. She opened her mouth and waited for the tomato to come to her. It landed in her mouth and she bit down, painting her jaw blood red with tomato juice. Then she answered Kíli's question by placing her head on the table and changing the fur on it.

The Dwarves surrounding her gasped as they saw her head disappear into the table top, leaving only her purple gold-speckled eyes and the tomato juice visible. She lay still for a moment, before changing her colour again and reappearing. Then she lifted her head and dug into a bowl of pork standing left of her.


	4. Three

**3**

Later, she didn't remember much of supper. She'd been joined by Fíli and Kíli on either side and had since been swept along in a whirlwind of sights, sounds and smells, getting more light-headed as the evening progressed.

She remembered the fat one, Bombur she thought it was, catching an egg in his mouth and the other Dwarves loudly cheering their support. Clearly, catching food using one's mouth was considered quite a feat in Dwarven culture…

She remembered flying food around the table using her magic, much to the Dwarves' amusement and the Hobbit's horror…

She remembered the Dwarves throwing food through the air themselves, also to the Hobbit's horror…

She remembered Fíli walking on the table and handing out ales left and right. She was almost persuaded by Kíli to take one, but Gandalf shot her a look from across the table, so she lit up her tail and made the ale in her mug disappear. No one noticed, perhaps because they were all cheering and toasting, before emptying their mugs and then holding a burping contest. Now she understood why Gandalf forbade her to take one…

She remembered the Hobbit sitting all alone in his ravaged pantry, and asking Gandalf whether it would not be kinder to send him asleep. " _No,_ he said, _he needs to get used to them_ …"

* * *

After dinner, she decided to take a break again. She wandered the rooms until she found a quiet room filled with bookcases. But just as she was about to pick one called 'A History of the Shire and its Inhabitants', the volume of voices reaching her from the hallway increased rapidly. Reluctantly, she pulled her paw away from the book, took one last moment in peace and quiet before walking back into chaos.

The first Dwarf she came upon was Kíli, who was all but juggling the Hobbit's precious crockery. Somehow he did so without breaking them, before tossing them at a pepper-and-salt-haired Dwarf standing in the kitchen, who wasn't even looking at the plates he effortlessly caught. Kíli, in the meantime, had received a new piece of crockery from his brother who she saw standing on the other side of the hallway in front of the dining room, with Gandalf pressing himself against the wall in hopes of not to get hit by plates randomly flying around. The cycle endlessly repeated itself.

"Do you do this after every meal?" she asked Kíli, after making her presence known by moving into his line of sight and ensuring she would not be hit in the head with a plate either. Between throwing a plate and catching the next one, he glanced to the side and smiled.

"Sometimes. Only if the host agrees," he said.

She frowned at him and gestured at the Hobbit, who was trying to keep the Dwarves still sitting at the dinner table from drumming his knives blunt. "He doesn't look very agreeing to me."

Kíli grinned. "Then it's even more fun!" Then, after hearing two-point-hat Dwarf say, "You hear that, lads? He says we'll blunt the knives!", the dark-haired Dwarf started singing, while still passing on plates and bowls: "Blunt the knives, bend the forks!"

His brother heard him and joined in: "Smash the bottles and burn the corks!"

Now they all caught on and some even started dancing (or moving along with the rhythm, anyway): "Chip the glasses and crack the plates,

"That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!"

She laughed along with them, and although she didn't catch the whole song, she didn't get the impression it really reassured the poor Hobbit. After a line about milk on the floor, Kíli surprised her by throwing her a bowl. Luckily, she had good reflexes and caught it, balancing it on the knob on her tail, before glaring at Kíli, though the effect was a little lost because she felt the corners of her mouth twitch up. "You couldn't have warned me?"

He grinned at her before catching a cup from his brother. He was now throwing the dishes from the most elaborate positions, including lifting a leg and throwing it through underneath it. "If you drop it, it's not my fault."

She smiled back, dropping her act of trying to look angry. "Do you drop them often?" she said, while flying her bowl over his head with a lash of her tail, right into pepper-and-salt Dwarf standing in the kitchen.

He shrugged. "Not anymore. I've had-" he caught and tossed another cup, now having stuck himself in the door frame, "-a lot of practice."

She chuckled, thinking it would maybe not be so hard for her to fit in.

Slowly, the oncoming flow of dishes thrown by Fíli became less oncoming, until it stopped completely. She heard cheering from inside and found all twelve Dwarves and the Wizard surrounding a pile of neatly stacked, clean dishes. They were all laughing at the Hobbit's disbelieving face. She had of course no choice but to laugh along. The Hobbit's face really was amusing.

Suddenly, three loud knocks were heard on the door, and all fell silent. The silence was broken by Gandalf: "He's here."

* * *

This time the Wizard opened the door, revealing a black-haired Dwarf that looked different from all the others. He looked burdened, like the world around him had done him great harm and he had never fully recovered from it. This had to be Thorin, rightful King under the Mountain and, more importantly, leader of this Company. She knew her place in it fell or stood with his approval.

"Gandalf," he said, "I thought you said this place would be easy to find. I lost my way, twice. Wouldn't have found it at all had it not been for that mark on the door." While the Dwarf removed his cloak, the Hobbit and Wizard argued in the background about whether there was or was not a mark on the door. _There is, that's how I knew it was here_.

The Wizard introduced the two, and a lengthy conversation about the Hobbit's fight and survival skills followed in which she was not particularly interested. After a minute or so, she decided they'd have to do the rest on the road and poked at the Wizard's mind. **"** ** _When's it my turn?"_** she asked a little impatiently. She'd prefer a blunt refusal over this endless blathering.

 _"Yes, yes, I'm coming to that,"_ Gandalf replied, a bit annoyedly. He cleared his throat, diverting Thorin's attention away from the Hobbit, and beckoned her forward.

* * *

He saw her step from behind the Dwarves gathered in the hole, trying not to show any surprise about her looks. He had learned from years of experience that the most important part of a person were his eyes, and he was met by two purple-green mixed ones. They were very expressive, and he saw that she was both curious and anxious to meet him. Searching her eyes, he started piecing her picture together. She was proud, intelligent, independent and a bit stubborn. Yet he also saw a weak spot, one she tried to hide but, like a curled-up hedgehog, was still visible. He wondered if she would follow his commands blindly like the other Dwarves did, and read the answer he already expected from the depths of her eyes. No. He'd have to earn her respect, and her friendship, before she would obey him without discussion.

From the other side, she was met by icy blue ones, fierce, brave and intelligent. She perceived a hint of vanity and a strong sense of order and hierarchy in them. She also saw a darkness in those eyes, probably caused by the loss of his home and many of his family and loved ones. She doubted whether, even if they managed to reclaim the Mountain, that darkness would ever fully disappear. Faintly, she heard the Wizard introducing them, though neither of them paid much attention.

Their staring contest ended quite abruptly, as she turned her eyes brown. Thorin couldn't fully hide the surprise in his eyes, but his overall expression didn't change and after a moment he nodded gruffly and made his way over to the cleaned-up dining room, greeting old friends here and there.

She swiftly took a longcut and had squeezed herself in the darkest corner of the room by the time they got there, knowing the Dwarves would speak more freely if she wasn't so prominently present. The others sat down too, Fíli and Kíli on either side of her like before. She hissed shortly when Kíli stepped on her tail. He quickly removed his foot and she pushed her tail behind her, along the wall.

The Dwarves put a bowl of soup and a mug of ale in front of Thorin, and took one themselves as well. Except her, Gandalf, who needed to keep his wits about him, and the Hobbit, who was standing out of her line of sight in the hallway, though she could sense his misery through all the Dwarves' suspension. Thorin took his time for his food, heightening the anxiety all around him.

"What news from the meeting in Ered Luin?" Balin with the white beard said, voicing everyone's thoughts. "Did they all come?"

 _What meeting_ , she thought. _Why didn't Gandalf give me a bit more background information?_

"Aye," Thorin said, "envoys from all seven kingdoms."

There was a short murmuring of approval.

Dwalin with the bald tattooed head asked the key question: "What do the Dwarves of the Iron Hills say? Is Dáin with us?"

Thorin sighed. She knew the answer before he said it: "They will not come."

Murmuring of disapproval.

"They say this quest is ours, and ours alone." Thorin continued.

In all honesty, she couldn't blame these Iron Hill Dwarves. This trip was going to be pretty risky, getting to the Mountain without flying would take ages, not to mention the Dragon waiting for them once they got there. Maybe Erebor was best left buried and burnt. She doubted anyone could get that into Thorin's head, though.

"You're going on a quest?" Bilbo piped up. She hadn't noticed him coming closer and listening in to the conversation.

"Bilbo, my dear fellow," Gandalf said, perhaps to distract the Hobbit, since she could have helped him as well, "let us have a little more light."

The Hobbit hurried to get a candle and bring it back, while Gandalf spread out a map on the table. She tried to look at it, but it was too far away. Instead of clambering on the table again, which would divert attention from the map, she silently slipped between the Dwarves and the wall and stuck her head up between Gandalf and Dwalin, who quickly pulled his hand off the table. She looked at the map, and narrowed her eyes. Something seemed odd about it. She turned her head a little. On all the maps she had seen, not counting her own views from above, North was on top. On this map, she realized, East was on top and North was on the left. She resolved to ask Gandalf about his later. For now, she listened to his voice (saying far, far away in an elaborate way) and looked at his fingers, pointing at-

"The Lonely Mountain," Bilbo said, looming over the map and reading it. Above the Mountain, a small red winged serpent had been drawn, clearly added later.

"Aye," a red-bearded Dwarf said, next to Balin, "Óin has read the portents, and the portents say: it is time." _Portents? What, a bird flying east instead of west?_

Óin, the deaf, grey-bearded Dwarf she had bumped into before and was now holding an ear trumpet to his ear, explicated: "Ravens have been seen flying back to the Mountain as it was foretold: When the beasts of yore return to Erebor, the reign of the Beast will end."

 _See? Birds flying east instead of west. Tsss._ She barely held back an unimpressed snort.

"Uh," Bilbo hesitated, "what Beast?" _Really? What has this Hobbit been doing all his life?_

"Well, that would be a reference to Smaug the Terrible," two-point-hat Dwarf said, "chiefest and greatest calamity of our age."

The Hobbit looked even more uncertain, so the Dwarf elaborated: "Airborne fire-breather. Teeth like razors, claws like meathooks. Extremely fond of precious metals."

"Yes, I know what a dragon is," Bilbo interrupted. _Not entirely from under a rock then, are you?_

A Dwarf wearing a knitted vest suddenly sprang to his feet. "I'm not afraid! I'm up for it. I'll give him a taste of the Dwarvish iron right up his jacksie!" He looked a bit drunk and, after a short cheering of support, was pulled back down by the Dwarf next to him. _I doubt he'd feel much from your Dwarvish iron up his… well._

Now Balin spoke up again: "The task would be difficult enough with an army behind us. But we number just thirteen-" _Fourteen._ "and not thirteen of the best. Nor brightest.

The Dwarves objected, thus proving his point with not very intelligent comments like: "Who are you calling dim?"

"We may be few in number," Fíli said, "but we're fighters. All of us, to the last Dwarf!" He banged his fist on the table to emphasize his point. _Yes, but-_

"And you forget," Kíli continued, "we have a Wizard in our Company." _And what am I, the neighbour next door?_ "Gandalf will have killed hundreds of dragons in his time."

She looked at the Wizard with purple-golden eyes. _Did you now?_ The Wizard looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. He started stammering: "Oh, well, now, I-I-I wouldn't say that, I-"

The Dwarf who'd pulled the drunk one down earlier cut off his excuses with: "How many, then? How many dragons have you killed?" Clearly, he thought giving the Wizard a straight question would help him remember. _Too bad there isn't much to remember_. Playing for time, the Wizard pretended to choke on his pipe smoke, hoping that would distract the Dwarves from non-existing dragon killings.

But now they had smelled blood (or drank ale). "Come on, give us a number!"

Definitely ale. The Dwarves sprang to their feet and started vociferously depicting how they thought Gandalf had slayed dragons. Or how they would be slaying their Dragon, she wasn't sure. The chaos kept going for a few seconds, until Thorin rose and shouted: "Shazara!

Immediately there was silence. She didn't know whether the Dwarves actually understood him or that he just silenced them by appealing to their respect for him. Now he started speeching:

"If we have read these signs, do you not think others will have read them too? Rumours have begun to spread. The dragon Smaug has not been seen for sixty years. Eyes look east to the Mountain, assessing, wondering, weighing the risk. Perhaps the vast wealth of our people now lies unprotected. Do we sit back while others claim what is rightfully ours? Or do we seize this chance to take back Erebor? Du Bekâr! Du Bekâr!" he ended. The last part seemed to be a sort of battle cry, as the Dwarves started roaring again. She, however, didn't partake.

 _That's all good and well, but I doubt sheer strength will help us in defeating that Dragon. If an army of Dwarves was swatted aside and burned like flies, how can thirteen hope to defeat him? Or if we managed to steal the Arkenstone and get another army, then what? A dragon's hide is impenetrable, and as two-pointed-headed Dwarf said, claws and fire aren't exactly a picnic either._ She glanced at Thorin. _I hope you have a plan._


	5. Four

**4**

Balin didn’t seem convinced either, though for different reasons: “You forget the front gate is sealed.” Slowly, the Dwarves quieted down. “There is no way into the Mountain.”

“That, my dear Balin,” Gandalf contradicted, suddenly twiddling an ornately wrought key in his fingers, “is not entirely true.”

There was a surprised silence, broken here and there by shocked gasps. She noticed Thorin’s mouth was hanging open.

“How came you by this?” he managed breathlessly.

“It was given to me by your father, by Thráin. For safekeeping. It is yours now.”

In front of fourteen pair of eyes, Gandalf handed the key to Thorin. She noticed even the Hobbit was looking interested now.

“If there is a key…there must be a door,” Fíli broke the silence, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

Gandalf nodded. “These runes speak of a hidden passage to the lower halls.”

“There’s another way in,” Kíli said, smiling. _Eh, let’s not run through the forest too fast, lest you land atop a dead tree._

“Well, if we can find it, but Dwarf doors are invisible when closed.” _To eyes?_ “The answer lies hidden somewhere in this map, and I do not have the skill to find it. But, there are others in Middle-earth who can.”

Now that the Wizard had explained things, he moved on to more practical details, such as how they were supposed to get into the Mountain.

“The task I have in mind will require a great deal of stealth, and no small amount of courage. But, if we are careful and clever-” _Good luck with that._ “I believe it can be done.”

“That’s why we need a burglar,” drunk Dwarf said. These Dwarves do have a thing with stating the obvious.

“Hm, a good one too,” Bilbo chimed in. “An expert, I’d imagine.”

“And are you?” redhead next to Balin asked.

Silence. The Hobbit didn’t seem to realize the question was asked to him. He even looked behind him to see if perhaps some other Hobbit had wandered in, one with heaps of expertise in the field of burgling. When none showed up, he got confused. “Am I what?”

“He said he’s an expert!” grey-bearded deaf Dwarf decided. “Hey-hey!” Amused, she noticed that even with his ear trumpet, he didn’t seem capable of hearing well.

“M-me? No, no, no, no, no, I’m not a burglar,” Bilbo said quickly, eager to restore his reputation as respectable and boring Hobbit. “I’ve never stolen a thing in my life.”

“I’m afraid I have to agree with Mr. Baggins. He’s hardly burglar material,” Balin said.

His brother agreed: “Aye, the wild is no place for gentlefolk who can neither fight nor fend for themselves.” His words were followed by the Dwarves arguing again.

 _That’s a bit harsh. It’s not like you’re mowed down the second you set foot outside your door_. She would have said so out loud, had she not detected a great flash of light to her right, followed by darkness before her eyes and a thunderous voice: “Enough! If I say Bilbo Baggins is a burglar, then a burglar he is.” At those last words, Gandalf shrunk back to his normal self, head brushing against the ceiling. Slowly, her ears came back up.

“Hobbits are remarkably light on their feet,” he continued in his normal voice. “In fact, they can pass unseen by most if they choose.” _And I can’t?_ “And while the Dragon is accustomed to the smell of Dwarf, the scent of Hobbit is all but unknown to him, which gives us a distinct advantage.”

She eyed the Hobbit. He didn’t look so distinctly advantaging to her. In all honesty, he tried to interrupt Gandalf by spluttering indistinctly.

The Wizard sat down again. “You asked me to find the fourteenth member of this Company, and I have chosen Mr. Baggins. There’s a lot more to him than appearances suggest. And he’s got a great deal more to offer than any of you know. Including himself.” He turned to Thorin specifically. “You must trust me on this.”

 _I can’t blame him,_ she thought as she poked at the Hobbit’s mind. _There’s not much sense of adventure in there, and no bravery at all._

Thorin blinked a few times in thought. “Very well, we’ll do it your way,” he said then, ignoring the Hobbit’s protests. He turned to Balin. “Give him the contract.”

 _Hang on,_ she thought as two-point-headed Dwarf started the cheering again, _I think I’m not prominently present enough._ She started growling, softly first, then louder. The volume rose and fell and in the small space it sounded like thunder. She leaned forward, out of the shadows, locking orange eyes with Thorin. It didn’t take him long to remember. “Both of them,” he corrected himself.

Satisfied, she settled back down, shifting her gaze from Thorin to Balin, who pulled a contract from beneath the table. She watched as the white-bearded Dwarf stood and passed a paper to Thorin, who all but slammed the contract in the Hobbit’s chest. Then Balin pulled a second out and looked at her. She lit up her tail, gently pulled the paper from the astonished Dwarf’s hand and some ink from the quill he held up, and kept both suspended in the air in front of her. She read the paper, eyes flying from left to right. Faintly, she heard two-point-headed Dwarf talking to Bilbo, but she didn’t really pay attention.

She’d just gotten to the part about how the profit would be divided (if any), when she heard a loud _thud_. She pushed the ink onto the paper in the shape of her name, then flew it back to Balin and looked to her right. _Now what?_

The Hobbit was laying sprawled on the ground. When she peered at his mind, his fae was flickering weakly, like a tired candle.

“Ah, very helpful, Bofur,” she heard Gandalf say.

* * *

 _Well, that’s the end of that,_ she thought. They had deserted the dinner room, and she was standing next to the Hobbit’s knocked out form. She sniffed at his suspenders and purred softly. _He’s still alive. I suppose Gandalf will bring him back._ She turned to Gandalf, eyes brown with a little dark green. **_Won’t you? I don’t have much knowledge of Hobbits._**

He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of him. You go mingle.”

Her eyes turned lime green, but after a moment she nodded and sniffed the air. The Dwarves had spread through the hole after Bilbo’s fainting, and she didn’t want to accidentally bump into Thorin. He had accepted her only a little less reluctantly than he had Bilbo, so she decided not to go to the same room he was in.

She knew how he smelled, so she found him in the parlour with Balin, Dwalin and some more she didn’t know the names of yet. She crept past them, through the hallway, and then she smelled smoke. Following her nose, she turned left at the end of the hall. There was the room the scent of smoke originated from. She peered inside.

Three Dwarves, Fíli, Kíli and the one with the two-pointed hat, all smoking pipes. _That’s good._ She lingered for a moment, taking some time to come up with a strategy. Finally, she changed her fur to smoky grey, the same colour as the smoke they were blowing out, took a deep breath, and walked into the room.

She didn’t make eye contact, though she could feel three pair of eyes on her. She walked to the gap in the ceiling where the smoke floated out, and looked up. Through the smoke, she glimpsed the stars, scattered across the black sky.

“What are you doing here?” two-point-headed Dwarf asked. It sounded rude, but when she glanced at his mind, she saw it wasn’t meant to be. She turned towards them and sat down with a smile.

“This hole is too cramped for me,” she told them honestly. “I miss the open sky outside.”

She saw them exchange a look. She didn’t think they truly understood, but they were Dwarves after all. They were probably used to cramped spaces, mining their beloved gold under mountains.

Changing the subject, Kíli said, gesturing to two-point-headed Dwarf: “Did you catch his name while on the roof?”

Two-point-headed Dwarf choked on the smoke from his pipe and coughed for a minute, while waving his hand at them to wait. They waited, and when he could speak again, he said: “On the roof? What, but how come we didn’t see you?”

Instead of answering, she just changed her fur orange, green, blue and brown, before returning it to its original beige.

This time, two-point-headed Dwarf was wise enough to pull the pipe out of his mouth before the smoke could again go where it wasn’t supposed to be. “How did you do that?” he asked in wonder.

She shrugged. “I’ve always been able to; I guess I was born with it,”

“And your eyes?” Fíli asked. “Can you change those too? I thought I saw so, but maybe I was mistaken…?”

She thought about that for a second. “Mmm…yes and no, I suppose. I can change them at will, but they change on their own as well.” And to be ahead of their next question, she added: “They reflect my mood. A colour for every emotion, give or take a nuance.”

“So your eyes tell us how you feel? Which colour means what?” two-point-headed Dwarf asked.

Her eyes turned to gold, with a little purple, and she smiled. She was enjoying these quick-fire questions. “I’m not gonna give everything away! Figure it out on the road.”

They smiled good-naturedly, so she decided it was her turn. “I still didn’t catch your name?” she said, looking at two-point-headed Dwarf.

“Bofur, at your service,” he said, getting to his feet and bowing, pipe in hand.

“Skyfire, at yours,” she said politely, bowing as well.

* * *

They chatted together for a few more minutes. She learned that Fíli and Kíli were indeed brothers, as she had presumed. Bofur had one brother, Bombur (“The fat one, but don’t tell him I said that!”), and a cousin, Bifur (“The one with the axe in his head,” “Whát?!”), who was also going on the journey with them. She realized he must have been the pepper-and-salt-haired Dwarf catching Kíli’s dishes.

Bofur was about to give her a complete explanation about how all thirteen Dwarves were related to one another, but before he could start she felt a vibration beneath her feet and raised a paw to tell him to be quiet. Then she heard it too, a sound not unlike her growling from earlier, raising and falling in volume. This, however, sounded more like humming.

Now that silence filled the smoking room, the other three heard it too. They put away their pipes with an uncharacteristically serious look on their faces and the four of them followed the sound to the parlour, where the rest had already gathered, save Thorin, who walked in after them. The Dwarves made themselves comfortable, either sitting in chairs or standing up. She just sat down on the floor. Having learned it wasn’t safe from being stepped on, she curled her tail tightly around her legs. All were looking into the fire, so she followed their example and gazed deep into the fiery heart.

Thorin started singing, very softly. When she looked at his mind, she was carried away to the places he sang about:

_Far over the Misty Mountains cold,  
_ _To dungeons deep and caverns old,  
_ _We must away, ere break of day,  
_ _To find our long-forgotten gold._

She heard the words behind the words, the feelings of pain and anger and loss he couldn’t express any other way. One by one, they all stood up, except Bofur. They joined Thorin in the second verse:

 _The pines were roaring on the height,_  
The winds were moaning in the night,   
The fire was red, it flaming spread,   
The trees like torches blazed with light.

All eyes were staring off into empty space, but their minds were not there. They were flying, over mountains and rivers and forests and into the past.

She was the only one still staring into the fire, eyes ablaze with a fire that wasn’t reflected, but came from deep within her.

* * *

Slowly, the Dwarves came back and left the room, looking for a place to sleep. She was the last one there, now gazing out the window. The Dwarf song had only intensified the feelings that had plagued her since she had vanished her wings on top of the roof. She knew she wouldn’t find any rest here, in this wretched cramped hole. Despite Gandalf’s whispered protests, she opened the door and ran out of the house and into the night, a shadow among shadows.

She found a group of cows, peacefully rechewing their cud. Cows weren’t the most active of animals, and with their bellies full and no visible threat in sight, they didn’t protest when a stranger needed a place to sleep for the night. She squeezed herself in between a brown one and a black-and- white spotted one, revelling in their warmth. Finally, she fell asleep, missing the familiar feeling of her wings on her back and her fire beneath her.


	6. Five

**5**

The first thing she heard the next morning was: “Cook-a-roo-hoo!!!” from a rooster jumping down from the roost where he had spent the night. His crowing was followed by sleepy clucking from his six hens and the soft chirping of their chicks. The red line of the sun could be seen, peering above the meadows, gradually losing his shyness as he did every day.

She looked at the chickens, jealous and sad. Then she felt the brown cow she was lying against stir, and quickly got up. Cows were clumsy when getting up and on top of that they often dropped some cow pat they had been chewing the night before. She didn’t fancy such a stinking shower, especially when she couldn’t get it off like she normally did.

She stretched like a cat, yawned with the tip of her tongue curled up and her lips pulled back, and used her left hind leg to scratch behind her left ear. Then she looked around in search of something to eat. Bilbo’s pantry had been ravaged last night, and she doubted any other inhabitants of Hobbiton would take kindly to her asking for some food. She would have to scrape together some breakfast herself.

An uneasy mooing grabbed her attention. She turned around and saw the brown cow standing, mooing for her calf, which came running back to his mother. She noticed the cow’s full udder and smiled. She looked at the calf. He was young, very young. Probably no more than a few days old. The younger the baby, the stronger his mother’s maternal instinct. It had been the same with – _No._

The calf stuck his head between the cow’s hind legs and she heard slurping noises. When she smelled the milk he spilled over his nose because of his gluttony, she carefully made her way over to the other side of the cow. She made soft noises like a hungry calf, and walked like she was one.

Cows, aside from being clumsy and not active, were also not very smart. This cow was eager to get the pressure off her udder, and she didn’t care whether her calf, owner, or someone completely else helped her.

She stuck her nose under the cow, picked a different teat than the calf had, and had breakfast.

* * *

She grazed among the cows until the sun had turned from red to a yellowish orange. Then she searched for Gandalf’s big light. **_How far are we on your end? Are they up yet?_**

It took him about a second to respond: _They’re waking. I’ll put some speed into it, how about you wait just outside Hobbiton? Wait at the sign on the road that points to Bree. We’ll be there in under an hour._

 ** _Deal._** She pulled back, beheaded a few daisies, and left the herd.

She knew Bree was east of Hobbiton, so she followed the sun as it climbed up the sky. Since Hobbiton was waking up and she couldn’t be seen, it took her longer than it usually would cover the not-so-great distance. She had to crawl along fences, sneak through bushes and stay out of view of anyone who might look out the window. It annoyed her not to be able to just cross the roads and meadows in plain sight, but the fewer people who took notice of her, the better. She wasn’t an easy sight to forget.

It took her just over half an hour to reach the East Road. When she found a sign that said Bree, she hid in the woods behind it. _Even if they miss me, Gandalf will be able to find me._ She sighed, realizing she’d have to wait again. She changed her colour and lay down, eyes fixed in the direction of Hobbiton, two yellowish brown orbs in the fresh green of the spring leaves.

* * *

After a while she got bored. She climbed up a tree and lay down on one of the branches above the road. Hind legs hanging down on either side, front legs under her head and her tail wrapped around the branch to prevent her from sliding off, she yawned and closed her eyes, trusting the noise of thirteen Dwarves and one Wizard to wake her.

She napped away an hour or two, surrounded by birdsong and squirrels.

* * *

She blinked her eyes open and lifted her head from the branch. She looked left, and saw the parade of ponies approaching. Each pony carried a Dwarf and the accompanying baggage. The only one without baggage was a horse, upon which sat Gandalf.

She watched them. _Nobody ever looks up_. Thorin was at the head of the queue, riding a chestnut pony, and looking ahead and not noticing her. _Tssss_. She hadn’t even bothered to change her colour.

She lowered herself from the branch, holding onto it with her tail. She dangled in front of Thorin, eyes on the same height. He looked at her as she cocked her head to the side, looking at him with purple eyes.

“My dear, would you mind coming down?” she heard. Breaking gaze with Thorin, she looked at Gandalf, who had ridden forward from his place in the queue, clearly trying to keep the peace with the leader.

She turned, lifted her head so she could look Thorin properly in the eyes, and unwrapped her tail. She used her front legs as shock absorbers and landed on four feet, lowering her tail to just above the ground.

“Give her a pony,” Thorin called over his shoulder, deciding she was not worthy of any more of his precious attention. _Yet_.

But she had tested his patience enough for the time being, and sat down as the queue rode on, until Bofur slowed down beside her. Aside from his dun horse, he also led a seal brown mare with three white feet, heavily packed. “Here you go,” he said friendly.

She smiled back. “I’ll pass, but thanks.” On his slightly confused look, she clarified: “Those with four legs walk, those with two sit. I have four, so walk I will.”

Bofur shrugged. She neighed softly to the brown mare, who was looking at her curiously. The mare shook her mane in return and focused her eyes once more on Bofur, who had missed the short exchange of sounds.

She walked alongside him for a while, mind open and observing the Dwarves around her. Most were chatting away, some just looking ahead in peaceful silence. She broadened her view until she could feel every living being in a hundred-meter-radius. She loved spring. Animals and plants alike came back to life after having survived the deadly winter. Young animals were born and enjoyed the sun, while their parents gained weight by eating everything in sight.

She let the bright faer of the animals wash over her, until she burst with energy. She broke her peaceful walk along the trail of ponies and started jumping and caprioling about, chasing her tail and circling the ponies. Some rewarded her with a whinny and a buck, while the Dwarf on their backs held on tight. She slalomed between them, shooting left and right around them.

Suddenly she heard Thorin’s grumpy voice yell from the front of the line. “Stop that!”

She felt fire climbing up her throat, but pushed it back down. It wasn’t in her instinct to disagree with the alpha male. She returned to her place alongside Bofur, who was looking at her sympathetically.

“Don’t worry lass, it’s not you,” he said. “Thorin’s never too friendly, even to us.”

She mulled that over for a second or two, then turned back to the Dwarf next to her. “So, before we were so rudely interrupted yesterday, you were going to tell me how you’re all related?”

His smile morphed into a grin, and over the next hour, she was exhaustively educated on how Dwarven families functioned.

Thorin was royalty, with Durin as his forefather, and Fíli and Kíli were his nephews, his sister-sons. Because Thorin was of the line of Durin, he was King under the Mountain (once he had a Mountain to be king of) and since he didn’t have any children, Fíli was his heir, with Kíli as spare. Brothers usually had a similar name, with Bofur himself as the exception: Bifur was his cousin and Bombur was his brother. They weren’t from the prestigious line of Durin, but hailed from the Blue Mountains, “seeking their fortune,” Bofur said.

Just when she started thinking only brothers from the line of Durin had similar names, she was corrected when Dori, Nori and Ori came up. Ori, Bofur said, had orders to chronicle the whole trip for the history books, and Dori and Nori had come along to protect him. Ori was the somewhat rabbit-like Dwarf riding behind them, and she judged it an excellent idea from grey-bearded Dori and braided-eyebrows-Nori to guard him.

Then there were Óin and Glóin, who were also from the line of Durin. Óin was the healer of the Company, and it was rumoured, Bofur said, that he had personally delivered his nephew, his brother’s Glóin’s son, Gimli. Óin was utterly deaf, as she had experienced, but his brother helped him go about his business. Her eyes turned blue at that for a moment, but before Bofur could be sure he had seen it they turned back to purple.

The wise Balin and the tough-as-nails Dwalin were cousins of Óin and Glóin, and were close friends of Thorin. They were among the oldest Dwarves in the Company, although that didn’t slow them down one bit.

After taking an hour to explain all this, Bofur leaned over to her, causing her to take half a step away from him. “Do you think he’ll come?”

She stared at him for a moment, then peeked into his mind since she had no idea who he was talking about. Her eyes and the tips of her long ears glowed white.

Bofur made a face. “Could you not do that, please?”

**_"What?"_ **

“Breaking into my mind like that. You know, privacy?” He waved his hand a little uselessly. But it did the trick. She pulled back and remembered some social rules from very long ago.

“Sorry. I’ve only had animals around me, and they never mind,” she apologized. She hoped she’d gotten it right.

“It’s all right,” Bofur assured her. Then he frowned. “What do you mean, only animals? Why no people?”

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Her eyes turned blue and then an increasingly darker grey, before she turned it away. For the second time within twelve hours, old memories, painful and pushed away into a dark corner of her mind, came forward. She never lied, having neither learned nor needed it most of her life, but she didn’t know how to evade his question since it was asked so straightforwardly.

When cornered, either mentally or physically, most animals chose between fight or flight. Flight, since it was less harmful than fight, was usually chosen by most animals.

But she wasn’t an ordinary animal. She was torn between fight and flight, mind gone blank, only instincts remaining. She was leaning towards fight, and was preparing to jump with bared teeth, when she felt a push to her mind, momentarily distracting her.

Gandalf had kept a close eye on her (both a physical one and a mental one) and he sensed the conflict inside her, though he wasn’t sure what it was about. Unlike her, he had however immediately grasped the consequences were she to harm Bofur. With all his might, he pushed her lingering mind towards flight, figuring it was the lesser of two evils.

He sighed, both from relief at avoiding a catastrophe and from doubt, as he was now second-guessing his decision to bring her along. He wouldn’t always be there to keep her in check and he certainly could not always predict what would trigger her instincts to survive. He watched her disappear into the woods and convinced himself she would be back. Then he turned to explain to an aggravated Thorin that he didn’t know what had just happened either, and try to convince him not to cast her out of the Company mere hours after she had joined it.


	7. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it's been so long since I updated. Rest assured, I haven't abandoned this story. But I started it over on fanfiction.net and while I'm up to twenty-two there, I've kind of forgotten to update here too. I plan on bringing the story over one chapter a day, and once I've got everything on both sites I'll try updating the story both here and there at the same time.  
> Enjoy reading and let me know your thoughts!

**6**

Indeed she came back, but not before an eerie howling had echoed through the woods which gave them all goosepimples. They unanimously decided not to make any reference to her past, but Thorin had demanded some information, as he wanted to be able to predict how she would react to things. He didn’t want them all walking on eggshells with the difficult journey still ahead of them.

Gandalf had said he couldn’t offer such a manual and had suggested the Dwarf ask her himself, though he implored him to be careful about it. She had made it very clear she didn’t want anyone prying into her past.

When she appeared between the trees again, watching them silent as a ghost, no one was sure what to do. Some ignored her, some watched her with wariness in their eyes, Gandalf was the only one looking encouraging. She waited with blue eyes, uncertain.

Kíli’s cheerful nature saved her. He beckoned her with a friendly smile on his face. She moved to walk beside his dark bay pony.

“Are you into wages?” he asked her.

She eyed him with turquoise eyes. “Why?”

“We’re taking wages on whether or not that Hobbit is going to turn up,” he explained. “So far, Balin, Dori, Bofur and Gandalf think he will, the rest of us don’t believe it. Want to give it a go?”

Her eyes had turned golden-brown. “No thanks.”

He had to try. “Why not? Scared you’re going to lose?”

Now her eyes were bright golden. “I am not! But what’s the point of waging when I don’t have anything to put in?”

His eyes widened. “You don’t have any gold? It doesn’t have to be, you can bet with anything of value.”

She shook her head. “What would I have? Whatever I need, I take care of when I need it, and I don’t have anything useless.” She looked pointedly at the baggage packed behind him atop the poor pony.

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

* * *

Winter was over, she had been scratching at her fur ever since the snow had begun to melt. But she couldn’t scratch and walk at the same time, since she needed the claws she scratched with on the ground. She hopped on three legs for a moment, trying to keep up with the ponies while using her right hind leg to scratch at her shoulder, then called in reinforcements.

She raised her head to the treetops and sent a loud chirping sound upwards.

She got a weird look from Kíli, and more from the rest of the Company as four birds, two blackbirds, a crow and a sparrow swooped down onto her back and began plucking at the long beige hair sticking up from her back. She sighed with relief as the pecking beaks took away the endless itch.

“What are you doing?” Fíli called, gaping at the scene over his shoulder.

“I’m moulting,” she said matter-of-factly.

They didn’t seem to understand. “They pluck the loose hair from my fur and use it to build their nest,” she clarified.

“But why are they sitting on your back?” Fíli asked again.

She frowned. Why didn’t they understand? It wasn’t that difficult, was it? “Because I asked them to,” she said, slowly.

“What do you mean, asked them to? Birds can’t talk!” He was quite convinced, too.

Incredulous, she shook her head and sent a hooting sound towards the trees.

An owl flew down on soundless wings and landed on her head, between her ears. He blinked his big black eyes at them.

“Of course they do. Every living being has a way of communicating, which could, in most cases, be described as a language,” she said. Communicating with the world around her had always been part of her life, she didn’t see why these Dwarves made such a fuss about it.

“So, you’re saying, you can talk to anything around you?” Dori asked, who had apparently been tuning in to the conversation.

She looked at them with light blue eyes. They really didn’t get it, did they? _How deaf must they be, how little must they understand of the world around them,_ she mused to herself. Well, she might as well explain things.

“Yes, but it is not just the sounds,” she began. “It’s also the way you move, your body language, the way you behave. Yet it’s not as complicated as you seem to think, animal language doesn’t have the endless nuances spoken language is so rich with. No conjugations, articles, unnecessary complications. Mainly names for things and beings, some verbs and descriptions of situations, all woven together into sounds and behavings.”

They seemed to be starting to grasp it. “So, how much can you speak?” Bombur asked. She was getting quite an audience, she noticed. Most Dwarves had come closer, only Thorin, Dwalin and Gandalf weren’t focused on her.

“Let’s see…most animals. I’m still having trouble with water animals and plants. Yes,” she quickly said, before they could ask again, “plants have a language. But as it’s more like vibrations, not sounds and goes terribly slowly, I’m still working on it.”

“Any animal? So you could imitate, let’s say, a nightingale?” That was Glóin, if she remembered correctly.

So, she made the beautiful whistling sound of a male nightingale, even though she didn’t consider it very appropriate since nightingales only sang at night. She did it so well a female nightingale came at her, flying away again in confusion when there wasn’t a male in sight.

Over the next hour or so, she was flooded with requests for other sounds. She made the sounds of every bird the Dwarves collectively came up with and then some. It was soon noticed, however, that although she knew a lot of birds, she didn’t know their names. When the birds got rarer, she was forced to ask the Dwarf in question to think up an image of the bird in his mind, after which she always got it right. She could describe the plumage, habitat and feeding habits and oddities of any bird, from magpie to eagle to peacock, she just couldn’t name them as such.

It struck them as strange, but Bofur had spread word of what had caused her to run off earlier and none of them wanted to be the cause of a recurrence.

She was just making the trumpeting sound of a swan, when she picked something up. She stopped in the middle of a call and turned her ears back, before turning her head.

“Wait! WAIT!” they all heard. They saw the Hobbit, Bilbo, clumsily running towards them.

 _Well, I’ll be damned,_ she thought. She absolutely hadn’t expected him to come. Her eyes were the colour of a blue sky behind thin clouds, and they had the same expression as his when he saw the swarm of birds on her back.

He ignored her and the stares following him for the moment and ran straight towards Thorin. Upon seeing the Dwarf’s icy glare, he rethought his steps and turned left to Balin, who was watching him with a somewhat friendlier expression on his face. While the Hobbit stood panting, Balin, with the aid of double glasses, inspected the now signed contract.

“Everything seems to be in order,” he declared at last. “Welcome, Master Baggins, to the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.”

The Hobbit was a bit busy warily watching the friendly snorts from Balin’s white mare, but smiled and nodded upon hearing these words.

Thorin was the only one still wearing his icy glare. “Give him a pony,” he ordered, and turned his pony around to ride on, followed by the Company. They rode on, passing the Hobbit one by one, who was babbling that he didn’t need a pony because he often did walking holidays around the Shire.

She sniffed at him in passing, both curiously and friendly. No, she still couldn’t figure out what it was exactly what it was that had compelled him to run out of his cosy Hobbit hole and all the way here, but she hoped it would last for a while. She had absolutely no intention of listening to him complaining about the lack of comfort he was used to at home.

“…Frogmorton once – OOGH!” she heard behind her. Looking around, she realized Fíli and Kíli, wearing twin smirks, had ridden towards him on either side and lifted him up between them. Fíli pulled the chestnut mare he had been leading a little closer, and he and his brother deposited the Hobbit between the baggage on her back. She chuckled to herself, turning around so the Dwarves didn’t see her laughing.


	8. Seven

**7**

After the spoils of the wages had been collected and most Dwarves had very unpleasant expressions on their faces, she sought out one of the Dwarves Kíli had said had betted the Hobbit would come, hoping they would be welcoming. She picked white-bearded Balin, as he had struck her as quite a tolerant Dwarf.

He said nothing as she came walking beside him, only glancing at the birds on her back (at the moment, a sparrow and two crows). They walked quietly for half an hour or so, until she turned her head and looked at him.

“So,” she started the conversation, “what has coaxed you into this journey?”

He smiled (at least he hoped he did, the beard made it difficult to see) and there was kindness in his eyes. “I wish to reclaim what is ours,” he said, though she felt like he wasn’t completely sincere. But she attributed it to her lack of insight into the emotions and expressions of Dwarves, something she would have to correct soon.

“And what is yours?” she asked.

A shadow passed over his face. “Our home.”

She felt she'd hit a nerve, and searched for a change of subject.

“And you?”

She looked to the left, trying to find an answer. “I am looking for a home,” she said finally. It was the truth. Part of it, anyway.

He looked at her curiously, but she didn't dare go further than that.

* * *

Though she and Balin didn’t exchange any more words, the silence they lapsed into was not uncomfortable. He didn’t glance at her like some of the others did, when they thought she wasn’t looking. And she was quite content to just walk alongside him, nickering to the horses every now and then.

She heard a strange sound, and turned her ears in an attempt to locate it. It came from behind her. Without slowing her pace, she turned her head and looked for the source of the odd scratching sound. It was familiar, an echo from years back.

She saw the rabbit-like Dwarf, she remembered his name was Ori, scribbling away in some book. From the movements of the quill, he wasn’t writing. It looked like he was sketching or drawing.

He glanced at her, and upon realizing she was observing him, grew red and quickly looked down again. She noticed he had stopped moving his hand.

She stopped, letting Balin pass with a sympathetic glance and waited until Ori’s bay gelding passed by. She walked at him, trying to peek into his book. She huffed in annoyance when she realized she wasn’t high enough.

With a sharp chirp, she sent the birds off her back, rose on her hind legs and walked on them, keeping her tail out for balance.

She looked at the drawing and smiled. It was a rather good-looking drawing of herself as Ori saw her. Only her hind legs, back and tail were present on the image, and Ori had paid special attention to the birds on her back.

She smiled at Ori, who was anxiously awaiting her judgment, or just hoping she wouldn’t bite him for drawing her. “It’s good,” she praised, “you’ve got a talent for it.”

He relaxed visibly. “Thanks.”

She lowered herself on four legs again, and asked: “So, why are you here?”

“I’m a scribe,” he said. “I was ordered to chronicle this journey for future generations.”

She already knew that, of course. Bofur had told her, but the question was a good icebreaker. She planned on using it again.

“Drawing me doesn’t sound like chronicling,” she said teasingly.

“Not you, specifically,” he said, “the birds.” He flushed a little. “I’ve never seen a bird up that close before. How do you do that?” She was half amused, half annoyed that he apparently thought birds more interesting than her, but decided not to remark. _To each his own._

“I promise them something back, if they do what I ask them to. They get nesting material without spending the energy needed to fly all over the place, and I get a reprieve from the itch.”

“I get that you can talk with birds. But how do they know you won’t eat them once they’ve pulled all your loose hairs out?”

She said nothing, and he continued: “How do they know you will hold up your end of the bargain?”

She opened her mouth and shut it again, realizing with a start that she didn’t know the answer. How _did_ they? _She_ knew she would never break a promise, unless absolutely necessary, but how did every animal, even those she had never seen before, know it too?

She looked at him. “It’s a good question,” she said slowly, “and I don’t know the answer.”

There was silence for a minute. Then she sensed that his mind had moved on to other subjects. She prodded a little to see what that subject was. She grinned.

“Which one?”

“A jay would be great.” He frowned. “But only if it’s not too much of a bother?”

She let out the screeching call of a jay, and sure enough, the greyish brown bird with the blue touches on its wings came flying at her. She used a series of clicks and whirrs to communicate with it as it hovered in front of her, asking it to sit still for a while in front of the Dwarf next to her while she got it food. Then she nickered to Ori’s mare not to shake her head for the time being, lest she shake the jay off.

The jay landed between the mare’s ears, in front of a very astonished but happy Ori, and she disappeared into the woods.

* * *

She used her nose to sniff out some seeds and berries squirrels had hidden in the ground. She was careful not to take all from one hiding place, but two or three items from each, and far from each other. Were she to take all the food from one hiding place, the squirrel it belonged to would miss a very important part of his survival package after winter. She had no idea what the names of the seeds and berries were, but she knew from the similar smell what plant they belonged to. They smelled edible, so she didn’t worry. Her nose had yet to fail her.

This sniffing and digging took her a about two hours. Not because it was so much work, but because she could use some peace and quiet from the bustling Dwarves. She could spend hours just looking at a flower opening its colourful leaves, never growing tired of it. She resolved to take her alone time regularly, for the good of both her and the Company.

When she came back, Ori showed her a very detailed drawing of the jay, who flew at her immediately and demanded its reward. She opened her mouth and let the jay perch on her nose, while picking chewed berries and seeds from between her teeth. This elicited yet another round of shocked gasps from the Dwarves. She was getting used to it by now. Only Gandalf knew that she had much more secrets to reveal, and he didn’t even know all of them.

* * *

She decided to go inspect the newest member of the Company. The Hobbit was the last in the line of ponies (she had noticed the order was more or less determined by the individual’s status in the group (read: Thorin’s eyes) and the Hobbit was dangling at the very bottom), so she had to wait until seven ponies had passed her before she was finally joined by the Hobbit’s chestnut mare.

“Hi,” he said politely, but not very happily.

“Hi,” she repeated.

She walked a little closer to inspect the Hobbit’s furry feat. Never had she understood the two-legged’s desire to clothe their feet in fabric. Any extra layer only dulled the sensations passed on from Arda to faer, sensations she deemed necessary to live. She was glad to see at least one two-legged shared her belief.

She decided not to ask him what had compelled him to come along, since she was fairly certain he didn’t know himself, and she didn’t want to remind him of his cosy/cramped Hobbit hole.

“Why don’t Hobbits wear shoes?” she asked.

“Because we don’t need them. The Shire is soft and green, and there is no reason for us to get our feet all sweaty by stuffing them in shoes,” he said.

She sniffed at his feet. They were sturdy and leathery, and covered with long brown hair which tickled her nose and almost made her sneeze. She managed to keep it in with great difficulty.

* * *

 

The days were growing longer in spring. When the sun was starting to make his way towards the edge of the world again and turned a shade redder, Thorin called: “We camp here for the night.”

 _Not a moment too soon,_ she thought. Her feet were getting sorer and sorer as the day progressed, and she was ready to stop for today. _I should ask Gandalf how much further it is to the plains._

She followed the ponies to the clearing where Thorin and some others had already dismounted. Thorin was doling out the tasks. Balin, Dwalin, Dori, Nori and Ori were told to unsaddle the ponies, feed them, after which Óin would check for injuries and treat them if necessary. Bofur and Bifur were sent out to gather wood for a fire, while Bombur was unpacking his bags from his pony, which contained pots and pans. Glóin waited for the wood to make a fire. Fíli and Kíli were told to scout the area, and Thorin oversaw the whole operation.

She sat down, giving Thorin the opportunity to task her with something. Behind her, Bilbo all but tumbled off his pony. Thorin paid no heed to either of them. She shrugged, and went to inspect Bombur’s cooking. After deciding she could do without it for the time being, she sauntered into the woods, in the opposite direction Fíli and Kíli had vanished to, and took some alone time.

* * *

The farther away she was from camp, the faster she went. At last she was running, flying between the trees like the wind. She had always been fast, the fastest of all, faster than _– No._

She lost her footing as her right foreleg stepped into a rabbit hole and rolled on for a few more meters, before coming to a stop against the great trunk of a tree. She looked up and realized it was an oak tree, causing memories to wash over her again. _No, no, no, NO!_ She shook her head and clawed her way up the trunk, stopping only when there was no more tree to climb.

It was a tall tree, and from the thin branches she trusted to support her weight, looked up. Above her there were only the stars. It was a new moon, for which she was grateful. The stars blinked at her, but there was no great smirking, shining moon to mock her. She lowered her gaze and looked around her. All she could see was a canopy of leaves, as far as she could see. It was oddly comforting.

She climbed down again when she heard her stomach rumbling, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten anything but cow’s milk and some plants here and there. She sniffed the air, smelling a rabbit colony not far away. She carefully made her way over. She hid behind a bush downwind, and picked her victim.

One of the rabbits was grazing too close to her. It was a male, and he was in the prime of his life. A bit skinny perhaps, but fat enough to quiet her stomach for the night.

Her unique ability to communicate with animals had given her a great understanding of them. She respected and liked them, but she was an omnivore. She had sharp canines and claws, and she hunted animals to eat them. As such, she did not have feelings of guilt when eating an animal she had talked with hours ago. She understood it was the way of things and, on a subconscious level, so did her prey.

That didn’t mean her food walked into her mouth out of itself, though.

She pulled her hind legs under her, shifting, getting ready to jump. If she didn’t choose the perfect moment, all her effort would be lost. The rabbit would escape with a flash of its white tail, and she would be left with nothing.

She tensed her muscles, waited for the rabbit to take another mouthful of grass, and leapt.

All around her, rabbits dashed away to their holes, their white tails flashing warnings to the others. That warning came too late for her chosen prey, though. In one leap, she was onto him. She put a paw with outstretched claws on his back so he couldn’t run, pierced his skin with her teeth and snapped his spine with one bite. His fae was gone before his body could take two steps.

She consumed her kill there and then, feeling no need to take it back to camp. With the rush of making a successful kill still surging through her body, she started to go back. She stopped at a creek, drinking away the blood. Her reflection looked back at her. _Is this a good idea?_

Without making a sound, she entered the camp, where she found Gandalf as the only one awake. Bofur, who seemed to be on watch, was sagging against a rock, fast asleep. _No sleeping for me here._

Her eyes must have been blueish, for Gandalf made a whistling sound with his staff, her cue to open a connexion with him. He couldn’t do that himself.

 ** _What?_** she said gruffly.

_Are you all right?_

**_Fine,_** she huffed.

He clearly didn’t believe her. But could she blame him? He thought the problem was that she was forced to hide a part of herself, and she wasn’t about to tell him otherwise.

 _At this rate, we will reach the plains the day after tomorrow,_ he said. He reached out a hand to comfort her, but she turned away from him. _Never will I tell anyone._

Out of instinct, and with a faint hope that they would understand it and not bother her, she dug a shallow hole at the foot of the tree she had chosen to spend the remainder of the night in. She dropped her poop in it, covered it with earth again, and peed on the trunk, close to the ground.

She climbed into the tree, picking a low branch and hung down, upside down with her tail wrapped firmly around the branch. She yawned, and slipped into a restful slumber.


	9. Eight

**8**

The song of a blackbird woke her the following day. She yawned and stretched, then got on the branch she was hanging from by using her tail like a grape plant uses its tendril, coiling on itself and pulling herself on the branch. There she lounged for a while, observing the sleeping Dwarves and Hobbit. Gandalf wasn’t there, he was probably away on some business of his own. He would be back, though, before the rest awoke, so they would never notice he had gone.

She practiced the names in silence for a time, while birds all around her started to wake up and began their morning song. When she thought she’d gotten all the names right, she looked at their minds. Were they dreaming? What did they dream?

The sun was too high for dreams, they had all gone hours ago. The members of the Company were all dozing and wouldn’t take long to wake up. As she looked longer, she began noticing things. Little things, but they gave her insight into their lives and relations nonetheless.

Most were sleeping together, some alone. Bifur, Bofur and Bombur slept close together, and all three had peaceful expressions on their faces. Bombur snored, the others grumbled every now and then.

Dori, Nori and Ori were about the same, close together with Ori in the middle. Dori, she noticed, slept with his face towards Ori, Nori was facing away.

Balin and Dwalin were silent as rocks, save for their loud breathing. It was almost as loud as Bombur’s snoring, especially Dwalin’s!

There was not much to remark on Óin and Glóin. They slept apart, both snoring, Óin the loudest (probably because he couldn’t hear it anyway).

Bilbo, the Hobbit, was curled in on himself, with a miserable expression on his face. The lack of featherbeds seemed to be hard on him. She would have asked Gandalf why he’d brought him, if he hadn’t been Gandalf. There was always a reason to everything he did, and though she didn’t always agree, she respected his decisions because he was much older. His fae was huge.

 _And thinking of..._ The Wizard came marching into camp, every other step marked by the tap of his staff on the damp ground. His gaze went first to the sleeping Company, doing a headcount and confirming everyone was there. Then he turned to her, glad to see her already awake. She made a soft grunting noise to greet him, ears forward and eyes golden. Then she turned back to the Company.

Fíli and Kíli were both sleeping. Kíli’s bedroll was tangled all about him, and she foresaw some trouble for him getting up. Fíli was on watch, though there wasn’t much watching involved. He was as asleep as the rest of the Company. She flicked her tail before shifting her gaze to the last Dwarf.

Thorin was the only one not sleeping quietly. She could see he wasn’t having a nightmare, but his brows met above his eyes and his hands were clenched into fists. She looked, but couldn’t look further without waking him up.

A soft whistle to the left caught her attention. She opened a connection between her mind and Gandalf’s and listened to what he had to say.

 _“Don’t wake them,”_ he warned, “ _they’ll be intolerable for the rest of the day if you do.”_

She frowned. **_“How did you know I was considering that?”_**

_“I’ve known you longer than they have.”_

She grunted some, but obeyed.

Apparently the grunting was louder than she’d intended. Fíli awoke, his hands gripping his swords before his eyes were well and truly open. She made another grunting noise, drawing his attention towards her and assuring him there wasn’t any danger. Not that he would have noticed it.

She walked away from the trunk, teetering dangerously on the increasingly thinner branch. When she reached the part where the leaves began, the branch began a creaking descent towards the ground. She waited until it touched, then stepped of lightly and walked over to Fíli. The branch swung back behind her.

“If the watching abilities of everyone here are as good as yours, why do you even bother?” she asked.

Fíli looked at her with something of resentment in his eyes, while sheathing his swords and stretching. Maybe she’d been too direct.

“Sorry,” she remedied. “But if you are asleep, I can’t be.”

He relaxed, but looked over at his uncle’s sleeping form before answering. “I know. But there’s hardly anyone who can stay awake at night. It’s so boring. And the worst thing is, you don’t notice you’re falling asleep, until you’re woken.”

She looked at him with green-orange eyes. “You don’t notice anything when you’re asleep?”

“Do you?”

“Most of the time, yeah.”

For her it was part of everyday life, but she had learned long ago that her having two ways of sleeping was rather unusual, but very handy. She explained it to Fíli.

“I can sort of slumber, then I’m aware of everything around me, but I don’t dream. And actual sleeping what I’m guessing is what you do, dreaming and blind and deaf for the world around you. I can get around with slumbering every night, but every once in a while, I have to really sleep. Slumbering breaks me up after a time, but I only sleep when I feel safe. When there’s no one awake, I don’t.”

Fíli’s brows were meeting. “How long exactly is a while?”

“Oh, every two weeks or so.”

His eyes widened. “You can go on for two weeks without actual sleeping?”

“Yep.” She didn’t tell him there was another reason she didn’t sleep unless she had to.

He clearly didn’t believe her. Thus far, they hadn’t believed anything she said without solid proof. The rest was waking up.

“Look, sneak up on me one of these nights and if I wake up, you’ll know I’m telling the truth.”

“All right.”

* * *

They left without having breakfast (they ate on their ponies), so she snacked on some plants alone before joining them. The day passed similarly to the day before, she chatted away with the Dwarves as she walked beside them. Thorin called out: “We camp here for the night,” and the Dwarves set up camp. She watched as Óin and Glóin made a fire. All the flailing with tinder and kindling struck her as very cumbersome, though she helped gather firewood.

The next morning she was up early and disregarded Gandalf’s orders from before, waking them all at the crack of dawn. She couldn’t wait to reach the plains. She walked beside Kíli, who noticed and commented on her excitement. She said nothing.

As soon as they were out of the woods and she saw the waving grass plains before her, she let out a trumpeting bellow and raised her head to the sky.

* * *

He gasped for breath. Two creamy white wings had sprouted from Skyfire’s back, swiftly unfurling to their full span of four meters each. They were similar to a dragon’s, with a thin membrane stretched taut over five ribs, the fifth was the edge.

He watched stunned as they rose, throwing shadows over him. Before anyone had recovered from the shock, she launched into the sky.

* * *

Her heart felt like it would jump out of her chest at any moment, willing her to go faster and faster, up and up and up. She was spinning, beating her wings to go higher without any regard for flying straight. This was where she belonged, with the wind under her wings and closer to the sun than anyone else could possibly go.

When the sun became too bright and began stinging in her eyes, she levelled off. She looked down and saw a line of ants, tiny from her perspective, which she knew were the Dwarves. She couldn’t see it, but knew they were probably gaping up at her. She was even too high to sense their emotions.

Once she’d caught her breath, she began spinning, somersaulting, and performing other acrobatic tricks she didn’t know anyone besides herself capable of pulling off. She zipped with vertical wings, one down and one up, making the circle she was describing ever smaller, until there was no more circle and she was spinning in place with her wings wide. Once she began plummeting, she pulled back up and glided for a minute, enjoying the feeling.

Then she felt fire climbing up her throat and finally, _finally_ let it out.

* * *

He saw her shooting through the air like a fish through water, and was consumed by contradicting emotions. First of all the anger for the Dragon that had deprived him of his home. As he saw her tumbling through the sky he saw embers flying through the air above a burning city, and his ears were filled with the wailing of children and women and the terrible screaming of those whose bodies were melted alive. Above all, he heard the bellowing and the whoosh of air as the Dragon swooped down, bringing fire and death with him, and then invading their Mountain, trampling their brave warriors like they were nothing but bugs.

He turned to Gandalf, as it seemed now clear to him he was the one responsible for bringing her into his Company.

“A dragon?” he asked, voice shaking with rage.

“Not a dragon, Thorin,” Gandalf responded, his calm voice piercing through the red haze before the Dwarf’s eyes. “She is not Smaug. Try to see beyond your hatred and give her an honest chance. You won’t regret it.”

That was the other side of the coin. He had seen the first drops of her lake of capabilities, and he had to admit he was curious what other secrets she held. She certainly was an asset to his Quest. No matter how much confidence he tried to show in front of the Company, deep down his heart sank when he looked at them. Loyalty, honour, a willing heart indeed, but those had not been in short supply in Erebor. Balin’s words were gnawing at him. A dragon was a more than formidable opponent, and he would need all the help he could get. But why did she have to be so much like a dragon?

He looked up and to his shock, saw her breathing a cloud of fire, then diving into it. He felt fire raging all around him as he hid behind a pillar and saw children’s kites being swallowed by the flames. But then she came out on the other side, unhurt and somersaulting, and doubt began to form in his mind.

* * *

She heard Gandalf’s enchanted whistle and knew it was time. She relaxed her tail and pulled her left wing to her side, causing her to fall sideways with her tail trailing behind her like a tail on a kite.

She plummeted down, all limbs relaxed so that her body was twisting as she fell, seemingly out of control. She closed her eyes, waiting. She didn’t need her eyes for this part, she just enjoyed the air whipping past as she approached the ground.

She felt the familiar shiver sliding up her spine, and stretched out her tail, angling herself into a nosedive. She opened her eyes again, waited, and judged it the right moment. She snapped open her wings and bent her wingfingers, shifting her tail so her legs were lower than her head, and landed front feet first on the ground.

She took a moment to calm down, then raised her head and looked into Thorin’s icy blue eyes. Her own were black. She could have folded her wings and tucked them against her sides, but she decided against it. She kept them open for all to see.

* * *

He looked at her. Her eyes were black and piercing. He couldn’t deny that he was impressed, he realized she had been in full control during every moment of her flight, including the plummeting at the end. Somehow, she’d known exactly when to pull up so she didn’t crash into the ground. He realized she was talking to him. He knew he was the only one who heard her words, and her voice was deeper than it had been when he had heard her speak.

**_“This is who I am, and I will neither change nor hide it. It is now up to you to accept me or send me away. If you choose to expel me from your Company, I will leave. I will not hold a grudge, nor hinder you in any way. But let me stay, and I will help you in any way I can. I will give my life for yours if need be. The choice is yours alone.”_ **

He took a deep breath, looking into her eyes. They were black, but restless as the ocean. He knew she had spoken the truth. He also knew it was not a promise made lightly.

He was the first to look away, and nodded. Her front legs left the ground and she rose vertically, three meters tall, wings spread. She roared, and breathed a column of fire over their heads.


	10. Nine

**9**

She was high between the clouds, letting the air currents under her spread wings carry her. She couldn’t believe it had gone that well, having at least expected a heated argument and possibly Gandalf interfering. None of that had happened, though Thorin still wasn’t very happy. She’d checked his mind before flying overhead and up into the sky. It was dark as a thundercloud, and she didn’t know whether lightning or rain would come first.

She had to make it up to him somehow. She might understand little of Dwarf-culture, but she was very familiar with the principles of leadership. She knew Thorin accepting someone so dragonish had done a hard one on his position within the group, and she would have to somehow take away any doubt of him being the alpha.

She reflected on what she knew of Dwarf-culture. They loved gems and other shining stones, and…um…they were…short?

 _Great start._ Emphasizing their lack of length probably wasn’t the way to go. Couldn’t she do anything with gems? _What’s the difference between a gem and a smoothed river stone?_ She didn’t have the faintest clue.

She groaned and let out a gout of fire. Fire-diving always helped her clear her mind. She angled herself into a dive, and looked at the swirling patterns inside the fire-cloud. Her eyelids were started to fall…and she jerked them back open.

She pulled herself to a halt, gasping. As she watched the now unused cloud slowly vanish into the white clouds, an idea took shape inside her head. That was it! She didn’t have to _find_ a gemstone…she could make one herself.

 _All right, where to start?_ She started by slowly angled herself down, following the river until she found a winding where the river had cut itself a way through the hard rock. A rock had strength, she knew, but a river had time. Even the strongest rock would eventually yield to a merciless river. And in doing so, it laid itself bare.

She landed smoothly, glanced at the sun and decided she had plenty of time. The river was shallow, but when she stepped in she could feel the strong current.

She flopped into the cool water and splashed around for a time. One of the best things of not having to answer to anyone but herself was that she didn’t have to worry about other opinions. If she went to a stream to drink, started back, and halfway decided she hadn’t had enough and went back, there was no one to blink an eye at it. She ate, slept, and did whatever she wanted whenever she wanted, and she didn’t have anyone to reckon with but herself.

It was also safer not to get attached to anyone. She’d have to bear that in mind.

When she was thoroughly soaked with river water, she shook her fur, sending most of the water out and leaving her fur damp. She could have evaporated it, but the day was hot.

She drank some water and then returned to why she had landed here in the first place. She looked around, looking for a nice-looking stone. She found several promising ones, but once she dug them out, there always seemed to be something imperfect. A dent here, a jut there. Or not even coloured, or with a rough surface. Finally she found one though, an apple-sized light-grey stone. She judged it would fit snugly in Thorin’s hand.

She cleaned the pebble, washing the dirt off until it shone. She brought it ashore to let it dry in the sun, when she saw something shimmer that wiped all thoughts about the river stone clear out of her mind.

The grey stone dropped and forgotten, she walked over. The river was thirsty, so at its outer bend was a steep, sloping shore. She approached the shimmer until she realized it was a stone, reflecting the light of the afternoon sun. She scratched at the dry dirt until it rolled out and stopped at her feet. Then she picked it up and brought it back to the water.

Once it was clean, she set it down to take a good look at it.

On one side, the stone was nothing special, looking just like the next. It was when she flipped it upside-down that it revealed itself. There was a crack in it, and from that crack shone dark blue spots, catching the light and sending it out again tenfold. It was almost as if the inside of the stone was from the depths of the sea. She was mesmerized by it, leaning forward, half believing that touching it would transport her to where fish swam.

She came closer. What was that little…speck in there? It seemed to be calling out to her…

Her nose was millimetres away from the stone’s surface. When looked upon this closely, it wasn’t blue anymore, was it? It was green like fresh leaves, yellow like the sun…red like her fire.

She touched the surface.

* * *

She hid the stone in a hollow tree. It was strange, but she didn’t think she’d have any trouble finding it back. Somewhere on the edge of her mind was a pull, leading into the direction of the stone. She had given of herself to it and thus, it was connected to her.

When she walked into camp, she made sure to do so in a submissive posture. Ears flat and back, lips pulled back and tail between her legs, causing her back to arch. She had long ago unlearned licking the chin of an alpha two-legged. She kept her head down but held her eyes on Thorin, searching for acceptance. Or at least not condemnation.

It was somewhere in between. There was incomprehension, but no rejection. She walked to the edge of camp, ignoring blank looks from the others, circlefired her place and lied down. She shuffled a bit until her wings were comfortable, head down. Her eyes were closed, but her perked up ears told everyone she wasn’t asleep. She heard Thorin take third watch. _Good._

She started smoking, long trails of black smoke rising and vanishing into the blackening sky. She heard Dwarves whispering around her, probably looking or pointing at her. She ignored them. Thorin was the only one she needed to worry about. The others would do whatever he told them to do. _Sheep._

Bombur was cooking, but his soup, stew, whatever it was, didn’t stir her stomach. She smelled some herbs, plants, other greens. No meat. They clearly hadn’t hunted.

She started dozing off, distantly aware of the Dwarves eating and then settling down for the night. She opened her eyes when she felt the whoosh of a bedroll being unrolled. When she looked left, she looked into Kíli’s brown eyes, and Fíli’s blue ones right behind them. She yawned, giving them an unnervingly close study of sharp teeth surrounding a curled-up tongue. The curiosity disappeared from their eyes to be replaced by nervosity, again switching to curiosity when she kept her tongue dangling from her mouth and looked like an enthusiastic puppy. Together with her purple eyes and long ears she made quite a sight, not to mention the rest of her body, long tail and great wings and all. She fanned them, stirring the air and subduing the smouldering campfire. Then she folded them back in, rolled onto her side and curled her tail around her, creating a barrier between her and the Dwarves but looking over it.

Her eyes roamed through camp and rested on each Dwarf in turn. Her eyes followed theirs as they closed, one by one. When they were all closed except for Glóin’s who was on first watch, she stood up silently and crept out of camp, staying close to the ground. Thankfully, Glóin’s watching eyes weren’t directed at camp but at the darkness around it.

Once she thought she was far enough away, she took flight. She hadn’t eaten from Bombur’s cooking pot; it didn’t look very clean. And there had been no meat. She decided to remedy that.

She thought of chasing down a bird, but she didn’t feel like plucking it before eating. She needed an easy meal without too much of a bother. She landed in a clearing and sniffed around. Once she found what she was looking for, she vanished her wings and followed the path her prey had made.

She stalked for half an hour or so. The scent indicated her prey was about four kilometres ahead, a distance more easily covered on the wing but the forest was too dense to land. Silently, that is. Deer were easily spooked.

The scent grew stronger, and her pace grew quieter, until she came to a stop and dropped onto the cold earth. She changed her fur to match the dark greens surrounding her and switched to her eyes, where she had previously relied on her nose.

She focused on movement. A herd of five, a buck and two does with their calves. The calves were very young, too young to survive without their mother. Killing one doe would equal killing two deer. She dismissed the does from her thoughts.

That left the buck and the two calves. The calves weren’t much fat yet, just bone. One wouldn’t fill her stomach, and two would be too great a loss for this small herd. The buck wasn’t very fat either, but bigger, and the velvet still covering the antlers was a treat. The velvet would disappear once the antler was fully grown, which would be in a month or so. _Now or never._

Having picked her prey, she moved towards him, not letting the rest out of her sight either. If one of them were to spot her, they’d all run.

She was behind a bush now, two meters away from the buck. He didn’t see her, but raised his head every now and then, checking for danger. She waited for his head to lower to the green grass again, before pouncing.

She leapt, and all deer spurted away from her, into the forest. Her chosen prey did the same, but he had hooves and she had claws. She was faster than him on the short distance, but his stamina was better. If she couldn’t catch him at her fastest, he would outrun her and she would lose him.

She squeezed the last bits of speed from her legs and jumped onto his back. Digging her claws into his flanks to hold on, she closed her jaw around his neck, feeling him clawing for breath as she crushed his windpipe. The buck soon collapsed from lack of air but she didn’t let go until she felt his frantically beating heart come to a halt beneath her left forepaw. Then she slid off him, catching her breath.

* * *

She ate the most delicious bits, leaving the rest to scavengers. After she cut open his belly, she ate up his heart, liver and the four sections of his stomach. She smashed a rock on his head to crack the skull open, allowing her to slurp the juicy brain out of it. Then she broke off his antlers and used her rough tongue to scrape of the velvet off one. The other she dragged back to camp, hiding it next to the stone she’d put there earlier.

She looked at the moon, realizing Bifur (if she remembered correctly) was still on second watch. But the moon had only to shift a little bit and it would be Thorin’s turn. She waited, deciding now was a good time to wash herself.

When she was done, she looked up again. The moon had shifted far enough, Thorin was on watch and everyone else was fast asleep. She took a deep breath. _Now’s as good a time as ever._

She walked into camp, making sure to make enough noise not to startle Thorin, but not to alert anyone else. The Wizard was there, but she wasn’t sure he was awake or not. Didn’t matter.

The dark-haired Dwarf seemed asleep, but a quick glance at his fae told her he was not. She had the stone wrapped in her tail. She positioned herself in front of the Dwarf who was gazing at her with his iceblue eyes.

She started to say something but reconsidered. She had no idea what to say. So she curled her tail about, revealing the stone. She pushed it towards him with her nose, colourful side upward, then looking up and almost into his eyes. She kept her gaze away from those icy pools.

She hoped Thorin would accept the stone, but feared it would look like a mere trinket in his experienced eyes. For all she knew, this could be the most precious stone in all of Middle-Earth. Or it could be worth less than a broken sword. She had no way of knowing. Thorin’s eyes gave away nothing of his thoughts and if she were to look beyond them, Thorin would trust her even less than he already did.

Thoughts flew around in her head. Her tail was twitching. The longer she sat there, motionless, the more she felt like springing up, flying away and leave this wretched Dwarf and all he represented behind. Living alone again, free, with no one to worry about but herself. The more she thought about it, the more tempting it seemed.

Thorin extended a hand towards the red stone at his feet.


	11. Ten

**10**

Thorin had had a bad day. First the creature he had reluctantly, at Gandalf’s urging, accepted into his Company, suddenly sprouted wings and breathed fire. Judging from Gandalf’s barely hidden smirk, that had all been his idea.

Then, when she came down again, she and Gandalf had all but forced him to accept her. Of course he could have refused, but that could have resulted in serious injury. She did almost attack Bofur, after all. If she really decided to lunge at him, he wasn’t at all sure he could get his sword out of its sheath fast enough. True, aside from the little incident with Bofur, she didn’t appear violent or dangerous at all. But her long claws and sharp teeth left little doubt that she very effectively could be, if she felt like it.

Also, she used magic. Which he didn’t trust. The only creatures he knew used magic were Wizards and Elves. Wizards were to be approached carefully, they always had a hidden agenda which could or could not bode well for those involved. And Elves…he had lost faith in them a long time ago and now hated them. With good reason. Their silky hair and dainty manners disguised their rotten insides. Had they helped the Dwarves of Erebor in their hour of need, as they had promised to do a thousand times over, things would have turned out a lot differently.

And now, after having been absent most of the day, she walked back into camp in the middle of the night. He kept one eye on her and the other on his surroundings. For all he knew, this could be a trap. Who knew where her loyalties lay. But he remembered the brief glimpse into her mind when she spoke to him on the plains. She had promised her allegiance to him, and he hadn’t seen any sign of insincerity. Then again, he was inexperienced when it came to searching people’s minds.

There was something in her tail, he noticed. At first, he thought it was the knob on the end of it that glowed whenever she used magic, and kept a wary eye out for any signs of trouble. But as she came closer, he realized it wasn’t her tail glowing with a weak red light. It was a gemstone, wrapped in her tail as she walked over to him.

He didn’t understand her. He probably never would. He had no idea what moved her. But this he did understand. She understood the difficult position she had put him in, and gave him a gift to make it up. It was his choice, and his alone, to accept or refuse it.

He looked from her forest green eyes to the red stone at his feet. A fire opal, his experienced eyes told him. The bright red spots peeking out from inside the cracked stone were unmistakable. It was not an especially beautiful one, he had seen some better ones…

He frowned. Taking a closer look at it, the pattern of the spots didn’t match those of a fire opal. In fact, they weren’t really spots at all. More like…waves. But fire opals never had waves…there was no red gemstone that did.

His curiosity got the better of him. He extended a hand towards the red stone at his feet.

The moment his fingertips brushed the surface of the fiery stone, he became aware of an unsettling sensation. He jerked his hand away, but it was already too late. He felt as if his mind had been enlarged. As if a window had suddenly appeared inside his head, and something that wasn’t his lay on the other side.

A look up into Skyfire’s pale blue eyes told him that was exactly what had happened. She was panting, eyes wide and panicky. For a moment, they locked eyes. Then it seemed as if the window closed and what lay beyond disappeared.

But that didn’t erase what just happened. The window was still there, and though he couldn’t push it open, he knew he couldn’t destroy it either.

“What…” he tried. “What did you do?!”

She just shook her head and looked as if she wanted to run. But she took a deep breath, closing her eyes and calming herself. Then he could feel the window being pushed open inward, and through it came a hesitant and wary voice.

**_“Can you hear me?”_ **

His eyes widened, for her mouth hadn’t moved. He realized the voice came from inside his head. He couldn’t push it away. Involuntarily, he directed his thoughts towards it.

_“What is this?”_

**_“I don’t know,”_** she said, and he felt she was honest. ** _“But I don’t think I can stop it.”_**

He groaned. His eye was pulled to the red stone, forgotten between them. “What did you do?” he asked again.

“I think…I think I connected my mind to yours. Through that.” She looked at the stone as if the whole situation was its fault.

“So you know my memories?” he asked heatedly. His memories, his _mind_ , was his own business, and he needed no one inside it. Least of all her.

“Can you see mine?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”

They fell silent again. The situation fully hit her, and him through that connection, and feelings of despair and indescribable sadness washed over him. He was about to ask if she was okay, when she suddenly closed the window again and took wing, away from him and her problems and into the night. The darkness quickly swallowed her and she was lost to his eyes. But not to his mind.

* * *

Eventually they made it work. Neither of them had told anyone else about the stone or the connection that flowed through it. He kept the stone in a pocket at all times, understanding the danger should it fall into the wrong hands. He wasn’t insensible to its beauty though, naming it Ursel, fire of fires, for the fire she had breathed into it. Often he sat at night, on watch, gazing into the depths of the stone. The longer he looked, the less terrible the result of his touching it seemed to grow. Whenever the stone captured his eyes, its beauty seemed to be more than worth the price he had unknowingly paid.

The effect of Ursel depended on the distance between both receivers. They could feel each other’s presence anywhere within a ten-kilometer radius, but to get more than a sense of direction they needed to be as close as half a kilometre. Then they could sense each other’s wellbeing. For moods and emotions, the distance needed to be less than twenty meters.

The distance limit came in handy during the day. On wing, she ranged far ahead or behind the trail of ponies crawling through the landscape like a lazy snake. Whenever he called out the infamous words “We camp here for the night” and started doling out tasks, he meanwhile sent a signal to her.

It wasn’t so much as a word, more like a flash, that told her they would not travel any further today. She then used the soft pulling at the edge of her mind to find him and nest down for the night.

* * *

As usual, during the day while riding at the head of the column, he puzzled things over rather than engage in small talk behind him. Such things included the journey, his sister back in the Blue Mountains, how his sister-sons were holding up… Most of the time though, they were things concerning his four-legged companion.

Not the connection between them, no. He had grudgingly made his peace with that and was starting to see its benefits. No, his concerns were about things much more down-to-earth.

The morning after that fateful night, when they were all breaking up camp, saddling the ponies and preparing for another day that would bring them closer to the Mountain, she had vanished into the forest and returned holding a deer’s antler in her mouth, which she began to strip of its outer layer using her tongue.

That meant she either had hunted and killed the buck, which, taking into account the size of the antler, must have been no small feat. Or she had chased away the animal that had made the kill and taken the prey for herself. Again considering the size of the antler, that must have been an animal larger and stronger than herself. Even with her magic, he believed that when push came to shove, strength was the deciding factor. And he had seen no injuries or other signs of a fight. He had concluded that she killed it herself, a conclusion strengthened by, now that he thought of it, the fact that she never took anything out of the cooking pot. He hadn’t really registered it, but she had to eat too. _She must be taking care of it herself._

Bombur usually cooked, and the Dwarf was as sensitive as he was big. Thorin had noticed he seemed a bit down lately, and now realized what the cause was. The cook was offended by her refusal to eat his food.

Considering her mind-reading, he found that surprising. If he could see Bombur’s depressiveness with his own two eyes, why couldn’t she?

When she’d been chewing on the antler, he took advantage of their connection and gruffly ordered: _“Next time you will bring your prey back.”_

The only reaction he got was an annoyed flick of her ear in his general direction.


	12. Eleven

**11**

“We camp here for the night,” he shouted, while at the same time debating sending the usual signal. Maybe he should…then again, she would find out anyway.

 _“We’ve stopped,”_ he told her.

 ** _“What? Why so–”_** The rest he blocked out. He had quickly found out how he could block certain parts of his mind for her, so she couldn’t see them. He standardly blocked his memories every time they spoke, and sometimes, such as now, their exchange of thoughts too. If she really wanted to, he knew very well she could break through his blockade, but so far she respected his wishes.

* * *

 _Urrrghh,_ she thought.

She understood he didn’t want her to know everything, but _could he at least answer my question?_

The sun was too high in the sky to stop. Usually the Dwarves rode until the sun and the earth almost made contact. Now the sphere wasn’t even darkening yet. _Stupid Dwarf._

She sighed and turned around. With the light, she didn’t even need to use Ursel to find them. They were setting up camp at the edge of a forest, which struck her as odd. Why not in the forest? Where’s the cover?

She landed in the middle of Dwarves busily unpacking their ponies. She thought about asking them what was happening, but decided against it. Years of hunting had taught her patience.

Speaking of hunting…no, if she went into the forest now, she might miss the big event.

Whatever that might be.

* * *

She found the answer almost immediately. When she landed she was just in time to see the Dwarves finish setting up camp. Some were on the field already, and she heard the clanging of metal against metal.

Apart from the hunting (which she still refused) he had never given her a standard task to do every day. Today probably wasn’t any different. She crossed the camp and walked in the direction of the loud metallic sounds. _I hope Thorin has set out a sentry. This noise is sure to attract any ill-wantings in within a one-kilometre radius. Especially in an open field like this._

She doubted he would be that naïve though. Thorin was experienced…and as stubborn as she was. He wouldn’t take kindly to her telling him what to do. She shrugged.

She found the source of the clanging: Fíli and Balin were trying to hack each other to pieces. Each time their blades met, it sent out a clang. She also heard an ongoing stream of commentary coming from Thorin, directed solely at his nephew.

“Higher.”

CLANG!

“Harder.”

CLANG!!

“Faster!”

CLANG!!!

She heard Fíli grunting as he tried to use his uncle’s advice while at the same time trying to block Balin’s sword, on its way to separate his head and body.

She watched for a while but could see nothing interesting about metal sticks flying around. So she went on.

A little farther, four Dwarves could be seen with warhammers or axes in their hands. They had tied sacks filled with stuff to some of the lower branches, and were hitting them with everything they had. Each time the sack swung away, then back again in time for another hit.

Still not so interesting. On she went.

She was now deeper into the woods. Suddenly another sound reached her. She pricked up her ears and listened. She picked up the hissing of something zooming through the air and smiled. The only weapons that could hurt her were arrows, rocks, and other airborne dangers. Maybe she could practice on evading them.

She entered a clearing, padding silently until she saw them.

If she remembered correctly: Ori, Kíli, Bifur? Yes, that was probably right. Ori, the smallest of the entire Company (except perhaps Bilbo) was practicing with his slingshot. Even though the weapon could do very little against an Orc or something of that size, Ori had good aim. Nearly each of his pebbles hit the light spot on the tree bark he had chosen as a target.

Kíli was practicing with his bow. He, too, had chosen a spot on a tree to shoot his arrows at, and that spot now reminded her of a hedgehog. He was shooting his arrows with impressive speed, drawing and nocking within half a second and then aiming and shooting within the next.

Bifur was abusing his tree with a weapon that reminded her of the harpoons whale-fishers used to hunt whales. It looked a bit like a spear with a ridiculously large blade. _Maybe their steel is weaker and they need a bigger blade to make up for it._ He had terrible aim though. Even though his eyes focused on the bark and he was standing at less than a meter distance from it, his spear hit a different part of the tree each time. But he didn’t seem to notice. _Perhaps the axe in his head is interfering with his brain._

 A mischievous idea entered her head. She crawled up behind Kíli, checking if they had seen her. She lay down in the high grass and changed her fur. She wasn’t deep enough to be invisible, but it would require a trained eye to see her.

* * *

He was feeling lucky, like he always felt when his arrows ended precisely where he wanted them to. He thought back to the many years of training it took to make a tree look like what it looked like now. It had been worth it.

Next time he would be sparring with Balin and Fíli practicing with his knives. At home, he would practice sword-fighting at least an hour a day, sometimes with Thorin, usually with Fíli and the two of them helping each other. Fíli had strength, but he had speed, and their matches usually ended in a tie. Thorin could beat both of them easily.

But now, his uncle wanted to cover as much distance a day as possible, so they didn’t practice every day. Only every week or so, enough for their skills to be kept up, but too little to learn anything new. His uncle wanted to give each of them the attention they needed, which was why they alternated. This week was Fíli’s turn.

And so he was practicing with his bow. There was very little Thorin had left to teach him, so the only way to get better now was to practice, practice, and practice.

He pulled an arrow from the quiver on his back, nocked and drew it while already preparing for another perfect shot. He looked along the arrow to the ones already sticking out of his target, and loosed.

The arrow went off by about a decimetre.

He nearly dropped his bow. How was that possible? He had paid enough attention and there was nothing wrong with his technique. The arrows clustered together in the bark proved that. He checked his bow. Maybe the string wasn’t tense enough anymore? No, it was so taut it produced a _twang_ when he pulled it a little and let it go. He walked forward to inspect the arrow. Maybe it had lost a feather or perhaps it was bent? No, looked like a perfect straight arrow, feathers intact. Then how was the miss possible?

A gust of wind, he decided. What else could it have been?

He shook his head and went back. A second gust at that exact spot was nearly impossible. The next arrow should hit its mark just fine.

It didn’t. His second arrow was half a decimetre higher than his target.

He was at a loss. _How was this possible?_ What could _possibly_ make his arrows go off like that?

As the Dwarf stood there, lost in thought, he heard a suppressed snorting behind him.

He turned and at first he saw nothing, though he heard the sound coming from right there. Then he spotted two golden eyes amidst the greening grass, and the rest of her body after that. Spurts of dark smoke came from her nostrils as she tried to keep her laughter down. Her whole body shook with it.

She changed her fur back, no point keeping it green after she’d been spotted. “The look on your face…priceless!” she hiccupped as she got up.

Kíli was mature enough to not get angry. He and his brother had pranked enough when they were…had they ever stopped?

“Ha ha, very funny,” he began, “Say, could you…


	13. Twelve

**12**

The squirrel was fast, but she was faster. She chased the brown animal up and down a tree, then finally caught him out of his element: on the ground. A quick bite in his neck opened his carotid and it wasn’t long before his life flowed out of him and his heart stopped beating. She sat back, contemplating taking this squirrel back to the Company.

Not yet, she decided. Maybe the next one. She took the squirrel between her teeth and climbed the tree she’d just rushed out. She went halfway, high enough to not be seen by passer-by’s, but not all the way to the thinner branches. She lay down, her tail curling around the branch in order to keep her up, and devoured the squirrel. While doing so, she thought back to a few hours earlier.

After Fíli was done sparring, Kíli fetched him to her. Ignoring the queer looks sent at the trio by surrounding Dwarves, he brought his brother up to speed, including the prank she had pulled on him. He finished by saying: “I’m seeing opportunities here, Fíli…”

The older Dwarf was doubtful at first. “But Uncle Thorin…he wasn’t exactly happy with our last prank…”

Their last prank, she was told after a curious rumble, had involved a heap of flour and a bucket of water. It had resulted in an angry Dís (their mother) and a very furious (and very floury) Thorin.

Kíli shrugged. “But he can’t punish us this time, can he? I mean, he can’t ground us or anything.” The corners of Fíli’s mouth were going up. “All he can do is shout at us –”

“And we’ll survive that,” finished Fíli.

The brothers were now grinning widely at each other. She felt like it was time to chime in.

“So, what did you have in mind?”

* * *

Dwalin was polishing one of his axes, Keeper. One spot was a bit duller than he wished it to be, and he sat down to remedy that. He’d do Grasper in a minute.

When the axe’s surface gleamed in the firelight, he reached out to Grasper, laying next to him.

The axe _hissed_ at him, like an angry snake.

He pulled his hand back, and Grasper quieted again.

He frowned. He knew he named his axes and as such sometimes thought they were more than just cold metal, but making sounds? Angry sounds at that?

“Thorin,” he called, and his friend looked up from where he had been gazing into the fire. Dwalin motioned him over to where he sat and pointed towards Grasper.

Thorin, clearly about to ask what was the matter, couldn’t prevent his mouth from falling open as Grasper hissed, this time loud enough to make the entire Company look in their direction.

Thorin was about to try too, when a thought crossed his mind. He waved a hand behind him to shush the Company and in the ensuing silence heard two distinctly familiar voices snickering behind a bush in front of him.

He sighed, inaudibly. He knew very well that his sister-sons were mischief-makers, and apparently they had reverted to their old habits and pulled a prank on Dwalin. But, he thought, creative as they might be, even they could not pull this off. There were only two members of his Company, as far as he knew, that might be able to make a heap of metal make a sound, and one of them sat behind him, an amused smile on the wizened face. That left–

* * *

“Come out of there, now. All three of you.”

Thorin’s voice reached them through the leaves, sounding rather dangerous.

She turned to Fíli, crouching next to her. **_“So is this when…?”_**

“Almost,” he whispered.

She smiled. The brothers had explained to her that there were four stages to a successful prank. First the three P’s: Plan, Prepare, and Prank, and a fourth stage named Exit. Which pretty much spoke for itself. She thought they had nearly reached stage four, but Fíli and Kíli were the experts, so she waited for their signal. She did pull her legs up beneath her in anticipation.

She didn’t have long to wait. When Thorin came stomping at the bush, yelling in rage, she heard Fíli suck in a breath and hiss **“** Now!”.

They turned tail and bolted out of the bush, away from the Company, leaving behind a bellowing Thorin.

Without all their baggage, the Dwarves were actually faster than she had expected them to be. Not that they could keep up with her. But she was a sprinter, and after her initial speed burst she came to a halt and caught her breath. Once they reached her, she set off again, this time in an easy trot that allowed them to keep up.

They ran on together for a few more minutes, before stopping altogether. They stood, wheezing and laughing.

“Nice job!” Fíli called out once he could speak again.

“Not bad yourself,” she grinned.

“Did you see the look on Dwalin’s face?!” laughed Kíli, causing all of them to burst out laughing again.

“You don’t think he’ll be too angry, do you?” she asked once the laughter had finally died away.

“Uncle? Nah, he usually cools down after a time. We can go back tonight,” said Fíli, looking at the sun.

They spent the time until sundown by chatting. She found out that the two brothers, neither of whom had been born in Erebor, lived with their mother Dís and their Uncle Thorin in the Blue Mountains, where the Dwarves of Erebor had settled at last after wandering Middle Earth as outcasts. When their Uncle had announced he would at last go on a Quest to destroy the Dragon and reclaim Erebor, they had been among the first to sign up. `

“Why?” she asked.

The Dwarves looked at her, then at each other. Finally, Fíli answered: “It is our birthright.”

That she didn’t understand. She cocked her head to the side in confusion.

Fíli elaborated: “We are Thorin’s heirs, and he is King-in-Exile. Once we reclaim Erebor, he will be King Under the Mountain, and we – well, I – will be King after him.”

She blinked moss-green eyes. “Why would you want to be king?”

“Er…because I have to,” said Fíli uncertainly. Then he puffed himself up just a little. “Because it is my duty as Prince.”

“Do you want to become King after Thorin?”

“Well, uh, yeah, I guess so?”

“What if you don’t?”

“Kíli would take my place.”

“What if he doesn’t want to?”

“Euhh…” the brothers looked at each other. Such a problem had never arisen before. They had both been raised with the idea that one of them, probably Fíli, would become King. It was as much part of their world as the sun coming up each morning.

Seeing a dead end, she tried another question. “What does a king do?”

Fíli was glad he could give an answer again. “He looks after his subjects. He receives delegations from other kingdoms, strengthens the bond with them so they will come to his aid in times of peril. He ensures trade and economy in his kingdom flow and his people thrive. He upholds the law and punishes crime with appropriate punishment. He judges criminals that are brought before him, and, if necessary, he will swing the axe in person.”

She blinked. That all sounded very abstract to her. How does one stimulate trade and economy? How does one decide upon a punishment in accordance to the severity of the crime? How did Thrór treat the Elves, so they did not come to the aid of Erebor when the Dragon came?

She voiced none of her thoughts, however, and after a moment of slightly awkward silence Fíli gestured at the half of the sun still visible above the horizon.

“I think Uncle will have cooled down by now, don’t you?”

They got up, stretched, and started on the way back. She could have flown back of course, but out of solidarity she stayed next to the Dwarves as they retraced their steps from earlier that day. The slight pull of Ursel at the front of her mind told her they were going in the right direction.

After lumbering for a few minutes, Kíli broke the silence. “We must be stupid, to be walking like this.”

They both looked at him. “What would you have us do?” asked Fíli, while she warily prodded Kíli’s mind to see what he was thinking. She didn’t like what she saw.

Kíli jerked his head knowingly towards her and Fíli’s brow furrowed. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Kíli ignored both his brother’s doubt and her growling and made his way over to her side. He swung his leg across her back and hoisted himself between her wings, his legs resting uncomfortably on her shoulders, where her wings joined her body, and his hand loosely holding her mane.

She let him sit so just long enough for him to relax, letting him think he was safe, before rearing up and back down again so he floated in the air for a split second. As her front end came back down, her rear end came up and she slammed her tail into his lower back, knocking the air out of him, so that he flew away from her and hit the ground a good distance away and slid across the dusty ground for a few meters until finally coming to a stop.

As he lay there, noisily sucking in air and panting, Fíli, who had been standing next to her as the whole thing played before his eyes, unfroze and ran at his brother to make sure he was okay. After deducing he was still alive, he turned on her, anger in his eyes. “Was that really necessary?”

She stared back with eyes as black as a moonless night. **_“I am not a horse.”_**

She checked his brother too. There was nothing broken, and although he would have a painful reminder not to do this again in the next couple of days, there was no permanent damage. Dwarves were sturdy creatures, it seemed.

She took a little pity on him and jumped into the air to hover just above them, hind legs outstretched. After they had both grabbed a leg, she gained some altitude and flew them back to camp.


	14. Thirteen

**13**

When they reached the camp, she landed at the edge. Thorin was sitting with his back toward the fire and although his eyes were closed, she knew he didn’t sleep. Fíli and Kíli went to get their bedrolls and spread them out on the ground. The night was cold and the other Dwarves had lain their bedrolls as close to the smoldering fire as possible. As a result, Fíli and Kíli, although up to their chins in their bedrolls, couldn’t help shivering just a little. So she curled up next to them and let them share in the warmth radiating from the fire inside her belly.

* * *

As punishment for their little joke, Thorin had the three of them clean the dishes for a week after that. She didn’t really mind in the end, finding it much more relaxing than she’d initially thought. Also in that week was the first time she, albeit hesitantly, brought her prey back to camp.

When she appeared at the edge of the camp with a dead rabbit in her mouth, every eye was on her. It was as if they realized for the first time that she was a predator, and could kill them should she wish so. She was a little surprised, to be honest. They hunted too, didn’t they?

Bombur was the first to regain control over his tongue. “Ah, very good, we’ll have rabbit stew tonight,” he said as he came trundling over to her.

She dropped the rabbit, stood over it protectively, flattened her ears and snarled viciously enough to make Bombur stop dead in his tracks. After a look at Thorin, who stood frowning at her with his arms crossed, the fat Dwarf retreated back behind his cooking pot.

Thorin quietly asked Gandalf, who happened to stand next to him, “What now?”

Gandalf barely hid a smile and Thorin got the distinct impression that he was enjoying the situation. “Well, you’re the leader.”

Blasted wizards, always speaking in riddles. Thorin sighed inaudibly as he made his way over to her.

She saw him coming and snarled again. Did it sound less aggressive than with Bombur, or was that just his imagination? He tried talking to her through Ursel, but she deflected his questioning proddings with irritation. He looked at her eyes. He had been paying attention to their colours in different situations, and he recognized orange. Orange was good, it meant annoyance but not yet full-blown anger.

As he stepped closer, feeling everyone’s eyes boring into his back, her eye colour lightened, and she lowered her body until her belly was pressed to the ground. Every muscle in her body tensed, she saw him close his eyes for a second before reaching down slowly to pick up the rabbit. He kept eye contact with her as she followed his hand towards the ground. As he closed his fingers around the bloody rabbit, she rolled onto her back, light belly up, tail wagging feebly.

Her eyes slowly turn a dark brown as he stepped backwards away from her, trying not to show his surprise at her actions, before finally turning his back on her and tossing the rabbit towards Bombur, who caught it and began skinning and preparing it. After some thought, the cook threw one of the rabbit’s hind legs towards her, which she caught in the air, satisfied.

The Company ate a delicious rabbit stew that night. It considerably improved the atmosphere, compared to the dried meat they were usually forced to eat. Thorin wanted to travel as fast as possible and so didn’t give the Dwarves time to hunt. Now she hunted as the rest of them were still riding or setting up camp, which saved them a lot of time. The first few times, Thorin had to put his foot down to order her to give her prey up, but eventually she just walked straight to Bombur and dropped whatever she had caught that day in front of him, often with various parts chewed away as she always gave herself her lion’s share before bringing it back. She even sometimes accepted a bowl of Bombur’s cooking later.

Still, she surprised them regularly, such as when she stayed behind at their campsite to spend hours watching a flower open and only joining them in the late afternoon. Or that time she nearly gave Fíli a heart attack.

It had to do, Fíli told them later, still shaking slightly, with something she had told him on one of the first nights of the Journey. She’d told him that, when she was asleep, she was still aware of her surroundings. He didn’t believe her, so she said he should sneak up on her one night and see. Which he did.

She heard him. Of course she heard him. She had told him the truth. She stayed still, letting him think she was asleep.

He never knew what happened. One moment he was quietly making his way over to where she lay sleeping on the ground, the next he found himself pinned on his back with something sharp pricking his skin on either side of his neck and something hot blowing against it. With a feeling of horror he realised she had her jaws around his neck. The sharp feeling were her teeth and the heat he felt was her fiery breath. The one eye he could see was dark orange, like fire.

What a stupid way to die, he thought. It almost made him laugh, but he made sure to keep perfectly still. Any movement could result in a tooth piercing his skin and drawing blood.

After what seemed like an eternity, in which only her eye and the teeth against his skin existed, she pulled away to tower over him, growling softly with her lips drawn back. Dimly, he was aware of nervous activity around him. He must have screamed or something, because overlapping, panicked voices filled the air. The other Dwarves tried to reach him, but whenever they got too close to her taste she swept her tail around, knocking them off their feet and pushing them back.

She spread her wings, the thin membranes stretching as the distance between the bones grew. She raised her head and opened her mouth, revealing the hellish red pit that was her throat. He fought to keep his eyes open, to keep them from closing like a coward’s, even though he was sure this burning hole was the last thing he would ever see before she killed him.

But she didn’t kill him. Slowly, her wings closed, coming back against her body. The pressure on his chest lightened as she pulled her paws back. Her mouth shut, and she blew a cloud of smoke from her nostrils into his face before climbing off him, leaving him coughing and spluttering as the other Dwarves rushed in.

Kíli and Óin reached him first, Thorin interestingly staying behind, instead making his way over to her.

“You’re fine, not even a drop of blood,” the healer told Fíli, not entirely hiding his surprise at the control Skyfire had demonstrated.

 _“Tell me…”_ Thorin said, _“he wasn’t in any real danger, was he?”_

**_“No.”_ **

_Hmmm… Maybe…_

Of course she could read his thoughts. **_“Forget it. I’m not your pet.”_**

She circlefired and curled up with a wing over her head.

* * *

Danger or no danger, the experience had scared the living daylights out of Fíli for a moment. So she walked beside his horse the next day, and asked if he was all right. When he said he was, she assured him she was never going to kill him. Which made him smile. A little. In hindsight, he decided, the whole event wasn’t as terrifying as it had seemed at the time. A king should be able to endure worse.

* * *

She asked Gandalf and heard that, after a month and a half of travel, they were at about a quarter of the trip. At this rate, they would get to the Lonely Mountain in late autumn. Thus far, it was, dare she say it, a bit of a dull affair.

Also there was the problem of the map. Even though Thorin sat poring over it for evenings on end, he couldn’t find the key to finding the door once they got there. Without that door, the key Thráin had passed over to his son was useless and with it the whole trip.

* * *

It was when they were camping on a lonely cliff that she learned more about her troubled companion. Thorin had dozed off against a rock and Fíli and Kíli were keeping watch. She was curled up next to them. Gandalf was smoking his pipe and Bilbo was feeding his pony an apple, though he tried to not be noticed. The rest of the Company was sound asleep.

Suddenly a loud screeching echoed through the night, waking Thorin and sending her into a tree overlooking the cliff. She held on to a branch with her tail and twitched her ears, trying to figure out where the sound had come from.

“What was that?” Bilbo asked, coming closer to the fire.

“Orcs,” Kíli replied, gazing into the night.

“Orcs?” Bilbo said, a panicky note creeping into his voice.

“Throat-cutters,” said Fíli, as if he were describing the weather. “There’ll be dozens of them out there. The Lone Lands are crawling with them.”

“They strike,” added Kíli, a hint of amusement in his voice, “in the wee small hours, when everyone’s asleep. Quick and quiet, no screams. Just lots of blood.”

The brothers looked at each other and chuckled at the look of panic on the Hobbit’s face.

She turned her head around and growled at them at about the same moment Thorin said, “You think that’s funny?”

Fíli and Kíli looked away. To find both Thorin and Skyfire against them was humbling. From Thorin they were used to it, but Skyfire was usually in for a bit of fun.

“You think a night raid by Orcs is a joke?” Thorin went on.

“We didn’t mean anything by it,” mumbled Kíli.

“No, you didn’t,” spat Thorin. “You know nothing of the world.”

“Don’t mind him, laddie,” said Balin, who had evidently returned from a sanitary stop. “Thorin has more cause than most to hate Orcs.”

She turned to Balin, then to Thorin, who had walked towards the edge of the cliff and looked into the night.

She climbed back out of the tree, deducing there was no immediate danger, just as Balin began his story.

“After the Dragon took the Lonely Mountain, King Thrór tried to reclaim the ancient Dwarf Kingdom of Moria. But our enemy had gotten there first. Moria had been taken by legions of Orcs, led by the most vile of all their race. Azog, the Defiler.”

Upon hearing the name, Thorin’s hatred crashed over her like a wave. She shuddered, hoping with all her heart he would never hate her like that.

“The giant Gundabad Orc had sworn to wipe out the line of Durin. He began…by beheading the king.”

Grief. Terrible grief. She had to forcibly keep tears from pooling in her eyes.

“Thráin, Thorin’s father, was driven mad by grief. He went missing, taken prisoner or killed. We did not know. We were leaderless. Defeat and death were upon us. “That is when I saw him. A young Dwarf-prince, facing down the pale Orc. He stood alone against this terrible foe. His armour bent, wielding nothing but an oaken branch as a shield. Deflecting the Orc’s attacks, he managed to grasp a sword from a fallen comrade and cut off the Orc’s arm. Azog the Defiler learned that day…that the line of Durin is not so easily broken. “Our forces rallied, and drove the Orcs back. Our enemy had been defeated. But there was no feast nor song that night. For our dead were beyond the count of grief. Wee few had survived. “And I thought to myself then, there is one who I could follow. There is one I could call King.”

_Maybe I could too._

Thorin turned around to see his Company all looking at him, silently promising their support. He responded by inclining his head in gratitude.

“And the pale Orc,” Bilbo asked Balin, “what happened to him?”

It was Thorin who answered, “He slunk back into the hole whence he came. That filth died of his wounds long ago.”

She decided that was an appropriate ending to the evening and flew off to let the story sink in. As such, she missed Gandalf and Balin exchanging a worried look.

She also missed the two Orcs upon Wargs across the ravine, observing the Company and talking to each other in the rough Dark Speech.


	15. Fourteen

**14**

Yesterday, she had killed a deer and brought it to Bombur. What was left of it, his pony carried to their next camping spot, which meant she didn’t have to hunt for them today. Just for herself.

She came upon a swampy area with geese nesting everywhere between the reed fields. Using her nose to separate newly laid eggs from almost hatching ones, she chased a few geese off their nest, trudging through the soft mud which reached up to her ankles. Once she found a fresh nest with four eggs in it, she climbed onto the small island it formed and began sucking the eggs out. They were best now, when there was not yet a half-grown chick inside.

She left a mess of broken eggshells behind and then, because she couldn’t resist, she chased through the fields, startling geese, just because they made such a funny quacking sound when they took flight.

Muddy water splashed onto her body as her legs grew heavy with dried brown clumps. Finally she reached dry ground and looked back, smiling as she saw the clear trail she had left behind.

She burned off most of the mud before jumping into a shallow pool to wash away the rest. Then she sat in the setting sun to wash her fur like a cat would.

Finally, when the sun had disappeared below the edge of the world, she decided to go back to her companions. Using Ursel to find Thorin, she set off in that direction.

It wasn’t long before she came upon proof of troll-habitation. First the horrible stench that seemed to soak the entire forest, then some tattered pieces of fabric which looked suspiciously like clothing. She sniffed at them, but they fortunately didn’t smell familiar.

She decided she was probably safer up in the air than down on the ground and flapped her wings, rising from the ground. She flew towards Thorin, but before she got to him, she heard a terrible ruckus that sent every bird in the vicinity flapping into the sky. It wasn’t an animal. She heard very familiar voices grunting and yelling.

_O, boy._

She didn’t have to use Ursel anymore, just tracing the noise to its source. She heard other sounds now too, clanging and screaming and stomping. She was nearing the sounds…and then, as quickly as it had started, everything died down. She halted, hovering in place, before diving down and landing on the ground. Carefully, she made her way through the forest, zigzagging between the trees, until finally she saw a clearing up ahead. She changed her colour and peered out from behind a rock.

With open mouth, she gaped at the scene in front of her. Three trolls, discussing how they would cook the half of the Company bound on a spit over the fire, while the other half lay to the side stuck in bags that left only their heads sticking out. How had this happened? Trolls were about the hardest creatures to get caught by, they were rambunctious and fairly dumb.

The bagged half included Thorin, and she quietly prowled around the clearing in order to reach him.

She brushed across his mind make him aware of her presence, then whispered into his ear, “How’d you get into this mess?”

He startled a little, then whispered back urgently, “Do something!”

“Like what? What happened?”

He filled her in quietly. Fíli had come running toward them, yelling there were trolls nearby, and they had already captured Bilbo. Kíli had stayed behind to stand guard and distracted the trolls just long enough for the rest of the Company to come barging into the clearing.

They engaged the trolls, and frankly, were on the winning side, when one of them spotted Bilbo and threatened to rip his arms off if they didn’t surrender right there and then. They had laid down their weapons, which were piled up next to the fire and got stuffed into bags or tied to the spit.

“Ah.”

“What ‘Ah’?” spluttered Thorin. “Don’t stand here gawking at me, do something!”

She sighed and turned around, beginning a stealthy manoeuvre that would get her on the other side of the clearing so she could divert the attention of the trolls. She didn’t particularly hurry, taking her time to survey the ground in front of her before placing her paws down, making virtually no sound at all. Adding her camouflaged body meant it was impossible to notice her unless you knew she was there. She completely ignored Thorin’s thoughts, shot at her like arrows: _“Move it!”_ and _“Hurry up!”_ and _“Would you just get going!”_ and kept her dark eyes on the trolls at all times, all the while thinking things like _Why should I be the one to rescue them? What if I weren’t here, what would they do? How can they ever hope to reclaim the Lonely Mountain if they can’t take on three trolls?_

The trolls were talking amongst themselves and she wasn’t paying much attention to it, when she suddenly heard the squeaky voice of the burglar.

“Stop! You are making a _terrible_ mistake!”

“You can’t reason with them, they’re halfwits!” yelled Dori from the spit.

“Halfwits?” said Bofur. “What does that make us?” _Not much._

“I meant with the…with the seasoning,” Bilbo went on. He had managed to get up and hopped towards the trolls.

“Wha’ about the seasonin’?” growled one of the trolls, apparently the cook.

“Well, have you smelled them?” said Bilbo, gaining confidence as the troll actually sniffed at the Dwarves. “You’ll need something stronger than sage before you plate this lot up.”

A chorus of “Traitor!” issued from the Dwarves, but she looked at Bilbo with something close to respect. He was smarter than she’d thought, and certainly smarter than the Dwarves. He was trying to play for time.

She knew the only thing that could possibly kill a troll was daylight, but as it was the middle of the night she couldn’t do much with that information. But if they could distract the trolls for a few more hours…it might work. She let Bilbo steal the show for a little longer, ready to intervene at the merest notion of danger. It would be good for his self-esteem.

“Wha’ do you know about cooking Dwarf?” said the troll on the other side of the spit.

“Shuddup,” said the cook. “Let the um…flurburburburhobbit talk.”

Her eyes widened and the corners of her mouth twitched up, but fortunately no one was looking her way.

“Th-The secret to um, cooking Dwarf,” began the Hobbit, stammering as he had to come up with something.

“Yes? Come on, tell us the secret!” urged the cook.

“Yes, yes! The secret is…” the Hobbit stole a sideways glance at his apprehensive companions, “tooooooo…skin them first!”

The Dwarves erupted, threatening Bilbo with curses and damnation. Meanwhile, the cook, not taking his eyes off the poor Hobbit, gestured at another troll, “Tom, give me filleting knife.”

“What a load of wubbish,” interrupted the second troll, who was still dutifully turning the spit. “I’ve eaten plenty with their skins on. Scoff ‘em I say, boots and all!”

“He’s right,” came the third, “nothing wrong with a bit o’ raw Dwarf!” He grabbed Bombur by the feet from amidst the pile and held him upside-down above his mouth. “Nice and crunchy.”

Bombur whimpered loudly and she could see drops of sweat fall from his gleaming head. She was halfway getting up to intervene when Bilbo beat her to it.

“No not that one, he’s infected!”

Both Dwarf and troll turned to him with identical expressions of disgust on their face, while the one at the spit said, “You what?”

“He-He’s got worms…in his…tubes!” squeaked the Hobbit.

The troll threw Bombur back onto the pile with a cry of disgust and she heard the other Dwarves groan as the heavy body landed on them with a thud.

She got an angry thought from Thorin: _“Do something! NOW!”_

**_“Why would I? You’re doing fine.”_ **

“I-In fact, they all have,” Bilbo went on. “They are infested with parasites, it’s a terrible business, I wouldn’t risk it, I really wouldn’t.”

But of course, the Dwarves had to ruin it. “We don’t have parasites!” “You have parasites!”

She couldn’t blame Bilbo for rolling his eyes as he saw all his hard work go up in smoke. She sent a flash of a thought to Thorin: **_“Give ‘em a kick, would you?”_**

Thorin understood almost immediately and put a well-placed kick into the mess of Dwarves at his feet, effectively shutting them up. She waited a few anxious seconds until the Dwarves finally caught on and started yelling again: “I’ve got parasites as big as my arm!” “Mine are the biggest parasites!” “We’re riddled!”

The spit-turning troll abandoned his spot and stomped over to Bilbo, who understandably shrunk back. “Wha’ would you have us do, then? Let ‘em all go?”

“Well…” Bilbo mused, clearly not finding that a bad idea at all.

“You think I don’t know what you’re up to?” he poked Bilbo in the chest a few times, causing him to stumble back a few steps, before turning to his fellow trolls. “This little ferret is taking us for fools!”

 _This is not good,_ she thought, tensing up. The troll was getting angry and Bilbo was losing his cool, squeaking: “Ferret?!”

“Fools?” another troll repeated heatedly.

Tok, tok, tok.

The sound cut through the heated atmosphere around the clearing like a ray of sunlight through a storm.

The three trolls turned around to see where the sound had come from and saw her standing next to a hollow tree she had tapped her left hind paw against, producing the sound they had just heard. She placed her foot back on the ground, smiled and sat down on her behind, sticking out her hind legs so the soles were visible, her wings fanned out on the forest floor behind her.

“Do pardon me for interrupting,” she began, “but you were all making an awful lot of noise, and I just thought I’d come see what all the fuss is about?”

She looked expectantly at each of the trolls in turn, waiting for one to answer her question. After what seemed like an eternity (she noticed the stars fading above them and the sky lightening shade by shade), the cook opened his mouth. “Well, we caught a bunch o’ Dwarves,” he motioned vaguely towards said Dwarves, who were all following the exchange wide-eyed, “and we’re gonna eat ‘em!”

She nodded understandingly. “I see.” She got to her feet and padded closer to the fire. “All creatures have to eat, after all…” She could feel protest building among the Dwarves, but silenced them with a look. “But I’m afraid…” she leapt onto the spit like a cat, making sure to retract her claws so she didn’t hurt anyone “that I have to insist you let these particular Dwarves go.” She sat down on the bound Dwarves, her tail hanging vertically down. She could see a yellow shade in the blue sky.

“An’ why would we do that?” said one of the trolls aggressively.

“Because I’ve signed a contract that says I have to do everything in my power to get them to the other side of Middle-Earth. And since I’ve got quite a lot in my power, which, trust me, you would not like to experience, it’s truly best if you let them go peacefully.”

“Really?” a troll asked sarcastically.

“Really,” she nodded seriously.

“Or else?”

One of the trolls had been silently making his way around her, no doubt to try and catch her from behind. Without so much as a glance, she hit him under his chin with her tail, hard. His eyes rolled up and out of sight as he swayed on the spot, before tumbling backwards and hitting the ground with a smack that shook the forest floor. He didn’t come back up for the time being.

“I really don’t want to have to do that again,” she said apologetically. “Fortunately…I don’t have to.”

And suddenly everyone noticed what her sharp ears had picked up moments ago: an old, grey man with a pointed hat and a staff in his hand, which made a soft thumping sound as it hit the boulder he stood on.

“The dawn will take you all!” proclaimed Gandalf.

“Who’s that?” asked a troll.

“No idea,” said the second, sounding unconcerned.

“Can we eat him too?” piped up the third.

The Wizard took a tiny step to his left and brought his staff down hard on the boulder, splitting it vertically in two. Waves of sunlight burst through the gap and hit everyone in the clearing.

Immediately, the trolls started shrieking and tried to block out the sun’s merciless assault, which did them little good as first their arms and then their bodies turned to stone. She winced and closed off her mind from her surroundings so she didn’t have to feel the trolls’ pain of essentially being burnt alive.

It only took a few seconds for their faer to die.

For a moment there was complete silence.

Then the cheers of relief started.


	16. Fifteen

**15**

She sighed, both in relief and sadness. Relief that her companions were safe, but sadness that the trolls had to die. Bloodthirsty and savage they might have been, but not inherently evil. They would have killed the Dwarves for the same reason she would kill a rabbit: because they were hungry.

She would have killed them herself because she had taken a liking to the Dwarves, but this whole mess could have been avoided had the Dwarves stayed away from here.

“Could you get us out?” asked Bofur beneath her. She growled at him, then reached out with her consciousness to envelop everyone in the clearing and, in a deceivingly soft tone, asked them why they hadn’t just left the trolls alone.

A cacophony of angry, confused thoughts was her response and after a few minutes she realized the Dwarves would never understand her problem with killing the trolls. The idea that they were evil was set deep into their minds, and no arguments from her would change that. She closed off the connection except to Thorin, who she warned: **_“Beware not to run into this kind of trouble again. The next time I might not be nearby to save you.”_**

He grumbled in response, but she didn’t pay attention to him, instead jumping down from the spit to kick some sand over the fire to make it go out before using the serrated underside of a claw to slice through the ropes binding the Dwarves. After cutting three, they fell off the spit and onto the ground in a heap. She left them to untangle themselves as she walked over to the half of the Dwarves in bags. She ripped a few of them open all the way and then left them to crawl out of the bags and help the others. She walked over to Gandalf, who was leaning on his staff and watching the proceedings. She pressed her head against his leg and he scratched between her ears.

They stayed that way for a few seconds until Thorin walked over to them with all the dignity he could muster after crawling out of a bag. “Where did you go to, if I may ask?”

“To look ahead,” the Wizard replied casually.

“What brought you back?”

“Looking behind,” said Gandalf, a sharp edge to his voice. Thorin accepted the admonition by inclining his head regally.

“Nasty business,” the Wizard went on. “Still, they are all in one piece.”

At this point, she turned to Thorin, shortly bared her teeth at him with a snarl, and then walked off.

She sat down for a minute as the Dwarves approached her with words of thanks and appreciation. She paid them no heed.

Soon enough, Thorin came over. “Fan out!” he ordered. “Search for their cave!”

* * *

 

Said cave was found quickly enough. She simply sniffed and trotted off towards the source of the stench, the rest trailing behind. Getting closer, it made her eyes water and by the time the cave came into view she was having quite some trouble keeping her supper down. She couldn’t believe the Dwarves could stand it as they went down, one by one, into the cave. Then again, they didn’t smell too rosy themselves, so maybe they were used to it.

She paced restlessly in front of the opening as she tried to listen to what was going on inside. But with every accidental breath out of the cave, her food shot up to the back of her throat, until she couldn’t push it down again.

When the first Dwarves emerged again, they found her panting in front of something that bore a striking resemblance to a puddle of half-molten lava. After coming back to herself, she dragged herself away from the cave and seven meters up into a tree, where she began taking in huge, calming mouthfuls of fresh, clean air. When she jumped back down again, she felt much better.

She was just sniffing at Gandalf’s and Thorin’s new swords (made by the High Elves, how in the world had they ended up in a troll hoard?) when she heard something. Her ears perked up and twitched as she heard something coming towards them at high speed, crashing through the forest as they went. **_“Something’s coming,”_** she warningly notified Thorin, who repeated her warning out loud and spurred the Dwarves into action as she tried to smell whether they were friend or foe.

She frowned as she sniffed the air. It smelled…familiar, but she couldn’t place it. She was searching her memory for the answer, when the unknown being came into view.

Accompanied by a loud yelling of “Thieves! Fire! MURDER!!!” a sled pulled by big rabbits burst forth from the trees, and clinging to the sled was–

“Radagast! Radagast the Brown,” said Gandalf, sounding relieved, as he motioned to the Dwarves to lower their weapons because this odd-looking fellow was no threat. Far from it, actually.

As soon as she realized who it was, she bounded towards the Wizard, for that was what he was, and began rubbing her head against his body like a gigantic cat, purring loudly and wagging her long tail. He absently scratched her back as he focused on Gandalf.

“What on earth are you doing here?” the latter asked.

“I was looking for you, Gandalf,” said Radagast, barely aware, it seemed to the Dwarves, who had been staring at the scene wide-eyed, of her presence. “Something’s wrong. Something’s _terribly_ wrong.”

“Yes?” encouraged Gandalf. She smiled. Radagast wasn’t known for his prioritizing.

“Just give me a minute…uhm…” Radagast squeezed his eyes shut, trying to remember what was so important. He heaved a pitiful sigh. “Oh… I had a thought and now I’ve lost it. It was right there,” he assured Gandalf, pointing into his mouth, “on the tip of my tongue!”

His eyes crossed as he stuck out his tongue. “Oh, itf notf a thought atf all! Ifs justf a liffle…” Gandalf plucked something thin and wiggly from his mouth “…stick insect.” He held up his hand, and Gandalf placed the walking stick onto his palm. She noticed some of the Dwarves looking disgusted and grinned her toothy grin at them. She was quite familiar with Radagast's many oddities.

“Right,” said Gandalf, turning to the rest of the Company, “may we have some privacy, please?"

* * *

“What are they saying?” asked Bofur.

“Can you hear anything?” asked Kíli.

“Who is this fellow?” demanded Thorin.

She answered them all at the same time with one hiss, “SSSHT!”

They complied for maybe three seconds. Then Fíli whispered loudly into her ear: “What do they say?”

She rolled her eyes and groaned, “Will you just be quiet for ten seconds!”, her tail swishing, a clear indicator that she was getting angry.

In the silence that followed, she was able to make out bits of the quiet conversation going on some fifteen meters deeper into the forest.

“Dol Guldur?” she heard Gandalf say, sounding bemused. “But the old fortress is abandoned.”

“No, Gandalf,” whispered Radagast, a clang of doom in his voice. “It is not. A dark power dwells in there, such as I have never felt before.” She could feel the hackles on her back slowly beginning to rise. “It is the shadow of an ancient horror. One that can summon the spirits…of the dead.” Her eyes grew wide, that wasn’t supposed to be possible. “I saw him, Gandalf. From out of the darkness…a Necromancer has come.”

A hand touched her back and without thinking, she spun around and snapped her jaws closed, a hair’s breadth from Kíli’s fingers, which he hastily pulled back.

“Are you all right?” Fíli ventured, gesturing vaguely to her back, where every single hair was upright, all the way from her neck to the base of her tail. She looked at him with a new colour in her eyes: grey like a stormcloud.

“Sorry,” she said to Kíli as her hackles went down and her eyes turned a pale dark green.

“What’s going on?” he asked. She was relieved he wasn’t angry at or afraid of her, and her eyes returned to their usual purple. “Nothing.”

He looked sceptical, so she added: “Nothing we need to worry about right now.” He seemed satisfied with that, as were most of the other Dwarves, who began rummaging around again.

She looked at Thorin, who was already staring at her, and told him: **_“I’ll explain later.”_** As he was the leader and would, if this trip came to a successful end, be king of one of the mightiest Dwarf-kingdoms, she thought he deserved to know. He nodded just as a howl echoed through the forest, capturing everyone’s attention.

“Was that a wolf?” asked Bilbo, sounding confused rather than fearful for a change. “Are there wolves out there?”

“Wolves?” echoed Bofur, sounding a little panicky. “No, that is not a wolf.”

 _Nope,_ she thought grimly, trying to pinpoint the location of the sound. _Distant cousin._

She heard growling, and whipped around just in time to see the warg leap down from a hill behind them and go straight for Thorin. Not if I have anything to say in it.

She barrelled into the warg from the side before he could reach the Dwarf, going straight for the throat and crushing its windpipe before it could get up from under her. It trashed for a few more seconds, warm blood flooding her mouth, then she felt its heart stop and she knew it was dead. She detached herself from its skin and tried to get the fur out from between her teeth. Only then did she notice about half of the Company staring at her and it occurred to her, a bit belatedly, that they had never seen her hunt before.

She roared a warning as a second warg came crashing through the trees, and Kíli reacted swiftly by putting an arrow into its already opened mouth. Thorin and Dwalin finished it off.

The wind brought them more howling as Gandalf and Radagast re-joined them. “Warg-scouts!” snarled Thorin as he pulled his sword out of the warg he’d just killed. “Which means an Orc-pack is not far behind.”

“Orc-pack?!” screeched Bilbo in disbelief.

“Who did you tell about your Quest, beyond your kin?” interrupted Gandalf agitatedly.

“No one,” replied Thorin, sounding worried.

“WHO DID YOU TELL?!”

“No one, I swear!”

Gandalf sighed.

“What in Durin’s name is going on?” demanded Thorin.

 _Isn’t it obvious?_ she thought. A moment later, Gandalf confirmed: “You are being hunted.”

She swished her tail angrily back and forth. _Wonderful._


	17. Sixteen

**16**

For a few moments, chaos reigned, as the Dwarves all started talking at the same time without listening to one another. Gandalf’s attempts to shut them up and get their attention failed, so he looked at her. She got the message.

She raised her tail and slammed it down, the knob on the end hitting the ground with a much louder _thump_ than could be expected from an object of that size. The Dwarves fell silent, whipping around to find the origin of the sound, and in the silence Gandalf took the lead again.

“Now then–” he began, but he was immediately interrupted by Dwalin: “We have to get out of here!”

“We can’t!” Ori immediately protested. “We have no ponies. They bolted!”

She groaned. Without their four-legged companions, the Dwarves would be slow. And they hadn’t been very fast to begin with.

“I’ll draw them off,” Radagast suddenly piped up, sounding determined.

“These are Gundabad wargs,” Gandalf said, wiping the suggestion off the table. “They will outrun you.”

“These are Rhosgobel rabbits,” said Radagast, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “I’d like to see them try.”

It wasn’t as if they had much of a choice, but as Gandalf gathered the Dwarves and herded them off towards the edge of the forest, she moved to stand in front of Radagast as he climbed onto his sled, looking straight into his eyes. **_“Don’t get caught.”_**

His eyes softened as they looked back into her dark green ones. _“Promise, little one.”_

He took his focus away from her, bent low over the handle of his sled and yelled “HA!”

A moment later, the only indication that twelve rabbits and a Wizard had just been there was a disappearing cloud of dust. She watched them crash through the forest until they were lost to her eyes, shook her head, and went after the Company.

* * *

She caught up with them as they hid behind a large boulder and took a moment to examine their surroundings. They were on an open plain, with groups of rocks here and there, but overall not very good cover. A good distance away, she spotted Radagast with an entire pack of wargs hot on his tail. Some of the wargs were ridden by Orcs, and all their attention was focused on Radagast for the time being.

“Come on,” she heard Gandalf say and the Dwarves followed him. She waited for them all to pass before closing the line.

Gandalf led them across the plain, from one rock formation to the next, while Radagast kept drawing the pack further in the opposite direction. Or so she thought, until they rounded another boulder and Thorin had to grab Ori and pull him back to avoid being seen by their pursuers, because Radagast didn’t seem to have the faintest idea where they were and seemed only set on staying ahead of the pack, no matter where that led him.

Gandalf deduced it was safe to move again and counted the Dwarves as they ran past him. Thorin stayed at his side and she heard him ask: “Where are you leading us?”

Gandalf didn’t answer because the last of the Company had passed them and they had to go again. Thorin wasn’t pleased with being ignored.

 ** _“Where_** **are _we going?”_** she asked the Wizard, who gave her a hurried image of a valley surrounded by waterfalls, accompanied by a feeling of peace and quiet.

**_“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”_ **

_“We don’t have a choice.”_

**_“Let’s hope Thorin agrees with that,”_** she replied, but Gandalf wasn’t listening anymore.

The Dwarves really were very slow, she loped alongside them effortlessly as they grunted and panted. _Why do you only have two legs?_ she wondered. Four was so much better.

She was very grateful to Radagast for focusing the pack’s attention on him, because otherwise they would have been caught already. Speaking of which…

She felt rather than heard the warg leap onto the boulder they were currently hiding against, noticing the vibrations as the beast walked around, sniffing where his prey had gone. It was only a matter of time before they were found. Unless…

 ** _“There’s one above us,”_** she told Thorin. Now that the panting of the Dwarves grew a little less, he could hear it growling and snarling. He found Kíli’s gaze and looked pointedly at his bow. The prince got the hint, concentrated for a moment, then took a few steps forward while turning to face his enemy. He aimed for a split second, then released the arrow.

By unlucky coincidence, the warg moved a little, sending the arrow into its side instead of straight into the heart as Kíli had planned. It roared in pain, snapping at the arrow as if it was an annoying insect before losing its footing and tumbling down the side of the boulder, producing a terrible amount of noise as it went. Once it hit the ground, its rider scrambled to his feet and lunged at the Dwarves, knife in hand and screeching with anger, adding to the racket already echoing off the rocks. The Dwarves pouncing upon the two didn’t do so very quietly either, and out of instinct she flattened her ears against her head as if that could block out the deafening noise.

Finally, the Orc and warg were dead and there was silence again. Not even the howling and snarling of the other wargs, which she took as a bad sign.

After two seconds, she heard one of the Orcs shout out something in their own disgusting language. She didn’t understand a word, but the new chorus of howls that were getting louder and nearer by the second told her enough.

She looked at Gandalf who had evidently reached the same conclusion, for he yelled: “Move! RUN!”

And so they ran again. But they were so slow, it didn’t take too much calculation to realize they would never be able to stay clear of the pack, which was rapidly closing in on them. So she broke away from them and sped up, breaking into a run. She could hear the Dwarves yelling behind her not to leave them, but she ignored them.

Finally running as fast as she could, she circled back around the pack so she ended up with the pack in between her and the Company. Then she took a moment to catch her breath, threw her head back and produced a lengthy howl that made every warg on the plain pause and look back.

On the other side of the pack, Gandalf heard it too and smiled upon recognizing the sound. “Good girl,” he muttered inaudibly. The howl was a mating call, a sign to any warg in the vicinity that there was a female in heat nearby. More or less anyway, the scent was missing, the one thing she couldn’t fake. But she was keeping them distracted, and it might buy them the time they needed to reach their destination.

Because unlike the rest of the Company, who were following him blindly, Skyfire knew he was not leading them randomly around the plain. She knew where they were going, and that it was nearby.

The wargs without riders were confused, some standing still, torn between where to go, others hesitantly stepping in her direction. But the wargs with riders, after an initial hesitation, were chasing the Dwarves again, urged on by their riders. The lone wargs followed suit, driven by their pack instincts and she couldn’t keep them occupied any more. So she shrugged, unfolded her wings and leapt into the air.

As she flew towards the Company, she considered breathing fire on the wargs she saw running beneath her, but dismissed the idea. The grass was very dry, and one errant spark could cause the entire plain to light up in an uncontrollable sea of flames.

She did knock one or two riders off their wargs, grabbing onto them from behind and tearing off their heads before they could fight back, but some of them had bows and she didn’t want to risk getting hit and plummeting down towards certain death.

She could see them now, and they weren’t doing very well. From her high point of view, she saw wargs closing in on them from all sides. She couldn’t see Gandalf, but she trusted him, so she came down to aid the Dwarves in their fight.

“We’re surrounded!” she heard on her left, but she didn’t have time to turn around and see who it was. Two wargs were in front of her, small, cruel eyes focused on her. She flared her wings, flashing them red and yellow, and roared. That kept them at bay for now, but other than that there was little she could do. Somewhere right of her, she heard arrows whizzing and saw wargs falling, and she knew Kíli was putting his bow to good use. But how many arrows did he have left?

“Can’t you do something?” asked Thorin, who as it turned out was standing beside her.

“Like turning this whole place into a torch? Bad idea,” she growled back at him. _Gandalf, now would be a good time to show up…_

“Hold your ground!” Thorin bellowed, brandishing his Elvish sword.

Then, as the wargs got ever closer and she began wondering whether they would all make it out alive, she heard the most wonderful sound in the world: “This way, you fools!”

Gandalf had finally found the entrance.

One by one, the Dwarves disappeared down a crack in the rocks until only she, Thorin and Kíli were left outside. Thorin was guarding the entrance, Kíli was emptying his quiver and she was turning every colour of the rainbow.

“Kíli!” his uncle bellowed, and Kíli looked back, seemingly shocked that he was the only Dwarf still standing in the middle of the plain. He turned and began running, far too slowly, in the direction of the crack.

He was never going to make it, so she flapped her wings to rise a few meters, banked right so she was flying behind him and grabbed onto his shoulders with her talons. His legs flailed as the ground flew by beneath him and maybe she was crushing his shoulders a little, but he probably preferred a bruised shoulder as opposed to being torn to shreds.

She dropped him down into the crack, waited for Thorin to slide in and then slipped in herself, digging her claws into the rocky slide so she didn’t fall to the bottom and keeping her eyes on what was happening around them. She turned her head and eyes a rocky grey so no one could see her from outside. She heard a familiar horn.

 ** _“Incoming!”_** she warned Thorin, just before swinging to the side as the body of an Orc came tumbling down the slide. She heard Thorin spat out what she had already seen, “Elves.”

As the happenings around them quieted down, she focused her attention back into the cave they were in as Dwalin yelled: “I cannot see where the pathway leads. Do we follow it or no?”

“Follow it, of course!” decided Bofur, before anyone else could utter a peep. As that seemed indeed the most logical and safe course, they began following the narrow path winding between two high cliffs. She was again the last to go, steeling herself for a moment before following behind Kíli.

The path was too narrow for her to spread her wings, so after scraping them against the rocks once she folded them tightly and squeezed them against her sides. She tried to keep  her tail as straight as possible and forced herself to focus on the small streak of blue air she could see above her.

“What’s gotten into you?” she heard from ahead, and saw Kíli looking at her over his shoulder.

“I don’t…like tight spaces,” she managed to get out. _Breathe, breathe, it’s gonna be fine._

“Really? You’ve got claustrophobia?” Kíli asked. That was probably the technical term for it, so she nodded nervously.

“Well, I suppose that would make sense,” Kíli mused thoughtfully. She didn’t know if he was talking to her or just to himself, but she decided to react anyway. Anything to distract her from her current situation.

“Why?” she asked. Why was her voice sounding so small?

“Well, what with the open sky being the exact opposite to this,” he said, motioning to her wings.

“Yeah, maybe…” she trailed off, beginning to feel it, a familiar feeling of powerful magic, and looking ahead she saw the opening. She began walking just a little faster, desperate to get away from this cramped feeling. She turned around a corner and breathed in relief as she took in the familiar sight.

Before them lay a valley, surrounded by waterfalls, with a few buildings at the bottom. An immense sense of peace radiated from the settlement (one could hardly call it a city) as its many trees swayed gently in the afternoon breeze. The wind carried the sound of flowing water up to where they stood gazing at it.

“The valley of Imladris,” Gandalf announced, and she could feel the turmoil beginning to stir within Thorin. “In the Common Tongue, it is known by another name.” And Bilbo gave the answer: “Rivendell.”

But she had another name for it, a name known only to a few. _Home._


	18. Seventeen

**17**

She watched as Gandalf was greeted by an unknown Elf, who was discreetly ignoring the fact that thirteen Dwarves, one Hobbit and herself had just come barging into his home and now stood, huddled defensively together, in the courtyard.

“Mithrandir,” the Elf said, greeting Gandalf by bringing his hand to his heart and then forward in a traditional Elvish gesture.

“Ah, Lindir,” replied the Wizard in the same fashion. She didn’t know Lindir, but apparently Gandalf did, and she was fine with letting Gandalf do the talking, as he had warned them to before they entered.

_“If we are to be successful,” he’d said, “this will need to be handled with tact. And respect. And no small degree of charm. Which is why you,” here he had looked sternly at Thorin, “will leave the talking to me.”_

As Thorin, she was beginning to realize, especially among Elves, possessed all the tact, respect and charm of a blunt axe, this seemed quite a sensible thing to do.

“We heard you had crossed into the Valley,” said Lindir in Sindarin, which she understood, but the Dwarves did not. She contemplated translating for Thorin, but decided against it. After all, he was not the one spoken to.

She kept one ear tuned in to the conversation, while keeping the rest of her attention focused on Thorin, whose hatred for Elves was battling his worry for the Company’s safety. He seemed very tempted to turn around, leave Rivendell and take his chances out on the plain again, when the matter was taken out of his hands.

The same horn they had heard about half an hour earlier sounded again, much closer this time, and when she turned around with the rest of the Dwarves she saw an Elvish cavalry approaching the courtyard at high speed.

Thorin reacted before anyone else could, shouting something in Dwarvish that she didn’t catch, but the wave of enmity suddenly coming off him made her freeze for a moment, torn between siding with the Dwarves or the Elves. In the end, she avoided them altogether by leaping into a tree standing at the edge of the courtyard and settling on a branch to follow the scene without taking sides.

Thorin pulled Bilbo closer towards the middle of the Dwarves clustered together while bellowing: “Close ranks!”. She watched as they formed into a tight circle with their weapons pointed outwards, the whole manoeuvre very much reminding her of a hedgehog curling up. When the Elves reached them, they began circling the intruders on their horses, which only served to heighten the tension in the air. Finally, the cavalry came to a halt, surrounding the Dwarves from all sides and waiting for them to make their next move.

The silence stretched on, the Dwarves frantically trying to think up a way to escape this predicament without getting killed, and the Elves sitting on their horses like statues, looking down on the newcomers with unreadable expressions.

At last, one of the Elves ended the impasse by swinging sideways off his horse, walking past thirteen pairs of eyes following him suspiciously, handing his sword to Lindir and greeting the Wizard by saying the latter’s name.

“Lord Elrond,” said Gandalf, sounding relieved, before continuing in Sindarin. “My friend! Where have you been?”

“We’ve been hunting a pack of Orcs that came up from the South,” the Elf responded in the same language (she could see the Dwarves getting uneasy). “We slew a number near the Hidden Pass.”

Now the Dwarves had started murmuring amongst each other, and Elrond must have noticed, for he continued in the Common Tongue: “Strange, for Orcs to come so close to our borders. Something, or someone, has drawn them near.” He looked pointedly at the Wizard, who replied a little sheepishly: “Uh, that may have been us.”

At last, Elrond turned his attention to the Dwarves and Thorin stepped forward. After a moment of silence, Elrond greeted him: “Welcome Thorin, son of Thráin.”

“I do not believe we have met,” said her Dwarf-companion, unable to completely hide the surprise in his voice.

“You have your grandfather’s bearing,” said Elrond matter-of-factly, before continuing in a slightly disapproving voice: “I knew Thrór, when he ruled under the Mountain.”

Thorin picked up the tone and was quick to respond. “Indeed? He made no mention of you.”

 ** _“Careful!”_** she hissed at Thorin as some of the Dwarves gasped audibly. Elrond’s eyes narrowed at him, but otherwise the Elf ignored the insult as he directed his next words at the entire Company.

“Nartho i noer, toltho i viruvor. Boe i annam vann a nethail vin.”

 ** _“Light the fires, fetch the wine. We must feed our guests,”_** she translated on Thorin’s behalf as a wave of relief washed over her. Since this was definitely directed at the Dwarves, she felt a translation was in order.

 _“You can speak Elvish?”_ asked Thorin, sounding astonished and a little bit greedy. She didn’t like it, but answered anyway: **_“Somewhat. My Sindarin’s pretty good, but I only know a few phrases of Quenya.”_**

She felt he didn’t quite understand, but before she could answer Glóin spoke up, sounding rather aggravated. “What does he say? Does he offer us _insult_?!”

“No, Master Glóin,” Gandalf explained in an increasingly exasperated tone, “he’s offering you food.”

After a quick discussion amongst themselves, they decided their distrust of Elves did not stretch out to any food they could provide. “Oh. Well, in that case: lead on!”

Elrond made to turn around, but stopped in his tracks when he saw a fleck of purple amongst dark green leaves. After a moment, he was able to make out her shape in the tree, and extended his right hand towards her with the palm up.

She blinked, purple eyes speckling with green, then slowly made her way out of the tree, keeping her eyes locked on Elrond’s the whole time. Careful not to make any sudden movements, she made her way over to him as if she were stalking prey. As she reached him, he withdrew his hand.

For a moment, neither moved and neither looked away, but both seemed ready to bolt. Then, she set her hind paws further under her body, stretched out her tail, and pulled her front paws off the ground. For a moment she stood, a solid head above him, front paws tucked against her chest as she maintained a precarious balance on her two hind legs using her tail as counterweight. Then she extended her front paws towards him and gently put one on each shoulder.

She looked deep into his eyes and saw the question there. But there was much to explain and not the right words to say it, so instead she pressed her forehead against Elrond’s and poured memories, thoughts and emotions into his mind.

She could see his confusion as he tried to make sense of the information flooding his mind, but now was not the time, so she highlighted the most important things for now:

_She has travelled with these Dwarves._

_She will continue to do so._

_Nothing he says or does will change this._

She saw his eyes widen just a little, but then he took a step backward and she dropped to all fours again. For a moment, he looked into her black eyes, then he stepped aside, and she ran past him and leapt off the platform to soar above Rivendell.

* * *

She set down next to a small lake fed by a high waterfall. As the water crashed down next to her, she sat looking at Rivendell for a long time. Her eyes changed colour too fast to keep up, but there was a fair amount of blue.

Thorin must have felt her warring emotions, for he sent her a questioning thought. Angry, she brushed him aside like a leaf in a storm. _No._

She shook her head to focus on other things, then walked over to the edge of the pond. She knew Elves, so she had some fishing to do before re-joining the Company.

A big white fish was stupid enough to take a rest underneath the overhanging rock she was perched on. Motionless and poised to strike, she waited for the fish to relax, gently swaying in the current. She focused on the image of the fish beneath her, seeing it in her mind, ten slipped her third eyelid over her eyes and, like a heron, plunged her open mouth into the water, closing her jaws around where she knew the fish was even though water was splashing everywhere and she couldn’t see it.

She felt her teeth sink into wriggling flesh and tasted blood, and suddenly the water was swirling with scarlet. She pulled her head out of the water and threw her catch onto the dry shore, where it flopped for a few more moments while she shook her head and pulled her eyelids back, then lay still. She swallowed it whole.

That would settle her stomach for the time being. She lapped up some water before taking to the air again.

* * *

Elrond had seated the Dwarves on a large balcony overlooking the valley. She landed in the tree standing next to it, and smiled at the Dwarves greeting her from below. She vanished her wings and, lying down, made herself comfortable on the branch, her tail dangling off it.

There were two very low tables, laden with (vegetarian) food and occupied by the Company, while Elrond himself sat at a third, higher table with Thorin and Gandalf, apparently his guests of honour. They seemed to be discussing the swords they had found in the troll-cave. Elrond was explaining the swords’ apparently famous history, but in her opinion a sword, or any weapon really, was only as good as the one who wielded it, so whatever they _had_ done did not particularly interest her.

A few Elves were wandering about, serving their guests, while others were providing entertainment in the form of music. She saw one Elf playing a long flute, while three others played stringed instruments of which she recognized only one as a harp. Together, they produced that flowing, gentle music so typical of Elves. It always calmed her, but also made her feel sleepy, and she decided, as she laid her head down on her front legs and turned her ears back lazily, eyelids starting to droop, that she maybe preferred the lively music of the Dwarves.

And speaking of…

She was roused again by a clattering sound that didn’t fit into the hypnotic atmosphere the music created. Looking down, she saw Bofur clambering onto the table, shoving off any dishes that were in his way as he went.

Conversation and music alike ceased abruptly as the Dwarf began to sing:

 _"Theeeerrre’sss aaaaaannnn…  
_ _Inn, there’s an inn, there’s a merry old inn_  
Beneath an old grey hill   
And there they brew a beer so brown   
The Man in the Moon himself came down   
One night to drink his fill"

This was clearly not the first time, because all the Dwarves were soon shouting along, meanwhile pelting the undeterred singer with uneaten food. Bofur had a nice, cheery voice, if not as deep as Thorin, she thought, recalling his song at Bag End.

 _"Ooooohh, the ostler has a tipsy cat_  
That plays a five-stringed fiddle   
And up and down he saws his bow   
Now squeaking hiiiiigh   
Now purrrrring looooww   
Now sawing in the middle"

Now they began chucking food at each other too, and at their hosts as well. She saw a piece of potato fly between Elrond and Gandalf, the latter of whom gave the first an apologizing and slightly embarrassed look. Bofur was bouncing on top of the table along to the tune, and she found her tail doing the same, banging against the trunk of the tree. She ducked as Kíli threw a bit of salad at her, grinning at him.

 _"Soooo…the cat with the fiddle_  
Played hey-diddle-diddle   
A jig that’ll wake the dead   
He squeaked and he sawed and he quickened the tune   
And the landlord shook the Man in the Moon   
“It’s after three,” he said!"

Loud cheering greeted the end of the song and she joined in with the laughter, giggling at the look on Elrond’s face. The Elf-lord looked as if he couldn’t decide whether to laugh or shout.

* * *

She wasn’t surprised that the Dwarves were herded off to their chambers shortly after. She jumped down from the tree and went with them. Gandalf stayed behind with Elrond, and she only gave them a short glance before following the Dwarves.

They were given luxurious chambers, complete with a large space for them to sit together, plus unlimited access to all of Rivendell’s facilities.

Their stuff was still at their previous campsite, having been abandoned in a hurry to go wrestle with the trolls, but they decided unanimously to go back for them tomorrow, as it was too dark now. One by one, the Dwarves left the common area to go find themselves a bed, until only she and Thorin were left. Thorin was looking, brooding, into the fire and she was gazing out over Rivendell.

 _“What’s he like?”_ he asked suddenly. She turned around in surprise, he usually preferred to speak out loud, but apparently he didn’t want to be overheard. **_“Who?”_**

_“Elrond.”_

She thought for a moment. **_“Wise,”_** she said. Then, **_“Reasonable. Why?”_**

He tried to hide it, but she caught on to his little dilemma anyway. Part of him refused to accept any help from Elves, whilst another part knew they had to decipher the map or risk a dead end at the foot of the Mountain.

 ** _“Just because one apple is rotten doesn’t mean the whole tree is,”_** she said, then smiled. **_“It could just be a bad apple.”_** She refrained from saying the Dwarves hadn’t exactly always treated the Elves respectfully either.

 _“Hmph.”_ After a pause, _“He seems different from other Elves I’ve met.”_

**_“How so?”_ **

_“Less…haughty.”_

**_“Could be. He’s half Elf, half Man.”_ **

_“What?”_ he sounded astonished and disbelieving. _“I thought they were myths.”_

That annoyed her. **_“Just because you’ve never seen something before doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I’ll bet you’d never seen anything like me before, but that didn’t mean I just popped into existence a moment before you laid eyes on me.”_**

He was taken aback by the anger he felt from her. As she looked at him, he noticed something funny. While the rest of her body had become increasingly shadowed as the night fell, her eyes stayed as if they were in broad daylight. The result were two sunset-red circles glaring at him, while the rest of her body was covered with night. They seemed to glow, yet no light shone from them.

When he didn’t say anything, she growled softly so as not to wake anyone. **_“Best keep your eyes and mind open. There are many things in Rivendell that will surprise you.”_**

After a while, her eyes turned to a soft orange, which he took as a sign it was safe to dare another question. _“How do you know Elrond?”_

This time, she snarled loud enough to make him take a few steps backward before he could stop himself. The sound ripped through the dark night, causing shuffling sounds to arise from the chambers behind him where the Company was sleeping, as some of the Dwarves woke up and looked around worriedly.

He thought he saw a flash of blue in her eyes, but then she had turned away from him. Wings sprouting from her back, she gruffly said, **_“I’m going to sleep,”_** before taking off.

* * *

She landed on the roof of one of the buildings, it could be the library, she wasn’t sure.

She hadn’t really been angry with him, he was just so narrow-minded at times that it made her feel desperate and a little lonely. But the last question he asked her… _He had no right to be poking into my past like that._

She sighed. Elrond did not appreciate it when she made scorch marks on the buildings, so instead of circlefiring she flopped down on the patch of roof last touched by the sun before it went down. It was still a little warm.

She yawned. She really was tired. All the fighting and running around had made her feel exhausted, and the Elvish music from earlier made it worse. Her head felt heavy, and her eyes ached.

She was safer than she had been for the past few weeks. She could sleep here.

She curled up and drifted off into her dreams. They were weird as only dreams could be. Wild, fuzzy images made up by twisted logic, strung together by harp music dancing through her mind like a leaf in a stream.


	19. Eighteen

**18**

Fíli and Kíli were annoyed.

They had been wandering around Rivendell for nearly an hour now, and still hadn’t found the kitchens.

“Why did _we_ have to be the ones to go to the kitchens and get food?” Kíli complained to his brother, who only rolled his eyes.

It was true though. While the Elves had declared yesterday that they would have full access to all of Rivendell’s facilities, including the kitchens, they had neglected to mention where exactly said facilities were to be found. After proclaiming that asking an Elf for directions was beneath him, Thorin had set his sister-sons to the task of locating the kitchens and retrieving some food.

The Elves certainly weren’t helping, barely sparing the brothers a glance as they passed, and they were too stubborn to ask the route to the kitchens anyway.

When they gazed down upon the settlement from above yesterday, it hadn’t seemed so big at all. Yet now they found themselves passing underneath the same archway for what felt like the tenth time. To make matters worse, Rivendell had clearly been designed for Elves, and so the staircases were much steeper than they were used to, resulting in an awful cramping in their calves.

“Do you even think we could find our way back?” asked Kíli.

Automatically, his brother glanced around, as if hoping to come across a sign saying: “This way!” No such sign was to be found, he did however see something else.

Elbowing his brother in the side, he pointed at the roof of a building in front of them. “Is that what I think it is?”

Kíli squinted over where his brother was pointing. For a moment, his eyes narrowed, then they flew open and he smiled in relief. “Maybe she can help us out!”

Dangling off the side of the building was a long tail with a furry knob at the end.

* * *

It took them a while to reach the roof. Skyfire had probably flown up in a moment, but as they didn’t have wings they had to climb into a tree and clamber onto the roof from there.

Once they got there, another surprise was waiting for them.

“Is she _sleeping_?” whispered Kíli.

Whenever she had rested on the road, she’d curled up into a tight circle with her ears perked up. Now, they were down and she was stretched out on her side, her legs splayed out. In the silence following Kíli’s words, they could even hear her snoring softly.

“Seems like it,” Fíli muttered. “I guess she had to recharge.”

A mischievous grin spread across Kíli’s face. “Come on, let’s wake her up!”

“No!” hissed Fíli, stepping forward quickly to grab his brother’s arm. “The last time I tried, she attacked me!”

Kíli rolled his eyes, not even bothering to keep his voice down. “Oh, come on, look at her! She’s fast asleep!”

“I _said_ ,” a voice caused them both to jump, “I was asleep. Not comatose.”

She was awake, legs under her and her head up, eyes blinking sleepily at them.

Fíli’s hand flew to the handle of one of his many daggers. She was quite unpredictable, and he wouldn’t put it past her to knock them off the roof for waking her up. However, she seemed to be in a very good mood today, yawning loudly then stretching lazily before finally getting up.

“Morning,” she said, as she sat down to scratch behind her ear with a hind leg like a dog would. “What’re you up to?”

Kíli was of course the first to respond. “Uncle sent us to the kitchens to get food, but we can’t seem to find them. We were hoping you could show us the way?”

“Sure,” she said, while walking towards the edge of the roof, her tail sliding across the surface behind her like a snake.

Despite having seen it many times now, the sight of wings sprouting from her back was still an unnerving sight. Her chest expanded to accommodate flight muscles that hadn’t been there before, and as the morning sun shone through the stretching membranes they could see the complex web of thin veins fanning out across them.

She spread her wings and leapt off the roof. That they had gotten used to, so they walked easily up to the edge to see her glide at least ten metres before touching down on solid ground. She took a few running steps to take the speed out, then folded her wings and looked up at them expectantly.

The Dwarves sighed, half wishing they had wings like that so they didn’t have to climb all the way down again.

Their descent went fairly well, except for the fact that Kíli missed the last branch and dropped two metres down. Luckily he managed to break his fall by rolling away, and by the time Fíli reached him with a worried expression on his face, he was on his feet again and wearing a reassuring smile.

They walked around the building to see their newfound guide sitting in exactly the same spot where they left her, waiting calmly for them to make their way over. Once they were about a metre away, however, she sprang to her feet and bounded off.

The two Dwarves set off after her, following her all around Rivendell. She didn’t exactly use the common walkways, instead walking on walls, balancing on dubious ledges like a cat and hopping onto decorative rocks they were fairly certain were not meant for hopping on.

Afraid of losing their only chance of finding the way (for she did seem to know where she was going), they scrambled after her, clambering onto everything she leapt onto and trying very hard to keep their balance on small ledges she ran across with such ease.

“Are we almost there?” panted Fíli, as they made their way over to where she sat waiting on a raised platform. Every time they thought they’d lost her, they’d find her waiting just around the corner. Once they got close however, she ran off again, never giving them quite enough time to catch their breath.

This time though, she stayed where she was until they reached her, then opened a door nearby and _walked_ through. They followed, and after about an hour and a half, _finally_ found themselves in the kitchens.

The first thing to hit them was the delicious smell of fresh-baked bread. They spotted some loaves lying neatly next to each other on a shelf, hot air wafting from them as they cooled off, spreading that mouth-watering smell. A kettle was hanging above a fire, and they heard a soft spluttering of soup inside. There were cabinets stacked with delicate Elvish cutlery and boxes full with exotic-looking fruit they had never seen before. They did notice an absolute lack of meat though. The only food looking animal-related was a crate full of eggs.

There were several Elves at work, cutting fruit and kneading dough. They looked up when the door opened, but upon seeing who had entered went back to work, conversing quietly amongst themselves in Elvish.

Skyfire didn’t pay them any mind either, stepping around determinedly and grabbing things here and there, while motioning for the Dwarves to do the same. So they wandered around a bit, hesitantly at first, and picked things that looked appetizing. Skyfire added some stuff they didn’t recognize but which must be edible, and they gathered everything on a wooden table.

Only then, because they hadn’t expected there to be so much variety, did they find themselves faced with the question of how to transport the intimidating pile of food on the table. They’d only brought one bag, in which they could probably put half of their food. The prospect of making two trips was not particularly inviting, since she’d swept through Rivendell so fast they hadn’t actually memorized the way and she probably couldn’t be persuaded to take them on again.

She solved that problem for them, fortunately, by walking to a door in the wall and pushing it open, revealing a stash of woven baskets in different sizes. She picked out a few, slipping the handles onto her tail like rings on a lance and walked back to them.

In the end, they managed to take everything in one trip. Fíli filled the bag and slung it over his shoulder, Kíli grabbed the biggest basket and she decided to help out by taking the remaining two and setting them on her back, between her wings to keep them in place.

The way back took about fifteen minutes.

During that time, she stayed on the ground with them and they chatted lightly. They steered clear of the mystery that was her past, not asking about anything  She asked where they had come from and learned they were from Ered Luin, or the Blue Mountains in the Common Tongue. Their mother Dís was Thorin’s sister. She hadn’t come on the trip, but she’d made her brother promise to return her sons safely to her, and she’d given her sons a runestone each to remind them of that promise.

They showed them to her, identical dark greenish oval pebbles with funny runes engraved. She couldn’t read those, but the Dwarves told her it meant something like “Remember and come back to me.”

She nodded, privately deciding to ask one of the Dwarves to teach her Dwarvish. It bothered her not to be able to read this or converse with Bifur, who spoke _only_ Dwarvish and as such was an incomprehensible riddle to her.

Then Fíli nudged his brother and teased: “Too bad Tiph didn’t give you one, huh?”

Kíli stomped him on the shoulder, muttering “Shut up!” while averting his eyes. She could see him growing red in the face.

“Who’s Tiph?” she asked in general, but it was Fíli who answered as Kíli seemed too busy studying his toes.

“Kíli’s girlfriend,” the older brother said. “Pretty girl, reddish hair, blue eyes. Daughter of a miner. Kíli’s had a crush on her for as long as I can remember, but she never seems to notice him.” He looked at his brother, who was flaming red by now. “Cheer up! Once you’re a proper prince, she’s bound to notice you!”

She just nodded vaguely. Having never been in love herself, she didn’t have any experience in these matters.

Kíli was spared the rest of a possible embarrassing conversation because they rounded a corner and the Company came into view. They all sprang to their feet at the sight of food, but Thorin was the first one to reach them and he wasn’t staring at the food at all. He was looking at his nephews with an expression in his eyes that she might have mistaken for anger if she hadn’t sensed worry in his mind.

“Where have you _been_?” he demanded. “It’s been two hours!”

“It, uh…took a while to reach the kitchens,” Fíli mumbled sheepishly, not meeting his uncle’s eyes.

Thorin was about to say something else, but she intervened, communicating with him directly. **_“It’s not their fault. Rivendell’s a bit of a maze.”_**

_“You took them?”_

**_“Yes.”_ **

He looked at her for a few moments, during which Fíli and Kíli shot them and each other confused looks. Finally, he looked at them again, waving his hand dismissively. “Get that to Bombur,” he said. Hardly believing they got off that easily, they hauled the baskets off her back and over to Bombur.

 _“I don’t suppose I could convince you to get our stuff from camp?”_ Thorin asked once they’d scuttled off.

 ** _“Nope,”_** she replied, pleased to see he was learning. She wasn’t a donkey, after all.

He grumbled something. Feeling magnanimous, she added, **_“I’d be willing to keep an eye out while you get it.”_**

He looked at her, and after a moment of self-control, said _“Fine.”_ Then, with even more of an effort: _“Thanks.”_

 ** _“You’re welcome.”_** She jumped into the air, circling upwards and away from him. _**“Well? Are you coming?”**_

* * *

After scanning the area, she came down to hover in front of where the Dwarves were climbing out of the crack in the rocks that led to the Valley. “All clear, go on.”

As they crossed the plains toward the woods where they had made camp a few nights ago and all their stuff was still strewn about, she climbed a little higher until she found a comfortable flow of air to glide upon for a while. Making sure she kept an eye open to spot any unwanted visitors, she hooked her tail and let the wind carry her along.

High up in the sky, her mind began to wander. She realized she’d grown fond of the Dwarves, and attached to them, no matter how much she’d tried to keep her distance. _Damn._

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. As long as she didn’t keep everything cooped up inside of her, she might…be able to…prevent… _No._ She shook her head to stop the flow of deeply buried images and memories from replaying themselves before her eyes. Never again. She had to be more careful. She couldn’t ever let anyone into her heart ever again. It was too dangerous. _She_ was too dangerous.

In an effort to distract herself, she played one of her favourite flying games. She unhooked her tail and folded her wings shut, ending her glide and sending her into a nosedive towards the ground. She closed her eyes to feel the air whipping past her as the wind and gravity fought for control.

After what felt like eternity but was probably only a few seconds, she felt the familiar ripple run up her spine and she opened her wings to give victory to the wind, letting it carry her to a safe height once again.

It was always an exhilarating feeling and she knew she would never tire of it. As she closed her wings and went down again, she reburied the images deep inside the dark maze of her memory.


	20. Nineteen

**19**

After they retrieved everything, Bombur went to make dinner out of the food they’d brought with them that morning, while the rest of the Dwarves just lazed around for a bit.

She’d come down too after a while, and the moment she landed and curled up to listen to the quiet conversations around her, Fíli and Kíli came over. She wasn’t particularly interested in company right now, but they were young and they didn’t mean it bad, so she let them approach with only a flicker of orange in her eyes.

They crouched down in front of her, seemingly hesitant about how to begin. She stared at them, still as a statue.

Fíli opened his mouth, closed it again, and tried once more. “Hey, umm…Thanks.”

She blinked at him.

“I don’t know what you said to Uncle earlier, but you covered for us, didn’t you?”

_Oh, that._

“He gets really worried about us sometimes,” Kíli piped up. “Thinks we can’t look after ourselves.”

She snorted out a small puff of smoke.

“I know we can,” Kíli said, misinterpreting. “But, to prevent this morning from happening again, we were thinking…”

He trailed off. She rumbled gently, cocking her head to the side.

“Could you maybe give us a tour of the place?” asked Fíli.

Her left ear twitched. She got up and walked towards the buildings. They stayed where they were, not knowing if that meant she agreed. But when she stopped and looked back at them, they got up and hurried after her.

* * *

This time she did use the common walkways, and when Kíli made a comment about it she turned her head towards him and gave him a toothy smirk.

They walked slowly up and down the paths, and whenever they came upon something of interest she’d tell them, pointing her nose at it like a hunting dog without ever making a sound.

**_“Fountain.”_ **

**_“Kitchens.”_ **

**_“Library.”_ **

The first few times they felt her presence in their minds it had scared the heck out of them, but by the time they got to **_“Storage”_** , they’d gotten used to it and even began to think back _“What’s in there?”_ to which she responded with a vague **_“All sorts of things.”_**

The first time she took a turn from the path was at ** _“Garden”_**. She walked underneath an old archway and showed them a large open space which held a vegetable garden, some trees and all sorts of exotic flowers and fruits.

As she walked forward, she pulled out of their minds and the tip of her tail began emitting a soft glow. It did not take them long to notice something very strange happening.

As she walked, she inevitably brushed against a leaf or a stem here or there. Before their very eyes, those plants that she touched began growing and maturing at an extraordinary rate, so that she left a wake of green leaves, ripe fruits and blooming flowers behind. All those flowers attracted swarms of insects, causing it to be almost impossible to shout “How are you doing that?” over the buzzing.

She turned around to look calmly at them, bustling life surrounding her from all sides. “I have no idea. It just happens.”

They sat down on a bench next to a sprinkling fountain as she made her way over to them. “There is magic inside of me,” she said, looking out over the garden. _And I have to let it out, or…_ She stopped herself and shook her head. _No._

They hadn’t noticed, busy as they were watching her handiwork with their mouths hanging open.

She stifled a laugh at the sight. “It’s not all me, though,” she said, walking over to one of the trees. She reached up and lightly pressed her nose against something looking like a green pear. Once it had enlarged and turned yellow, she plucked it and brought it over. “These grow here because of Elvish magic.”

“What is that?” asked Fíli, while Kíli just looked at the fruit with a confused and slightly wary expression on his face.

“A mango.” Seeing that they apparently didn’t know it, she added “It’s a tropical fruit, so it shouldn’t be growing up here.”

(In their defence, it should be noted that the Dwarves of Erebor hadn’t exactly been living a life of luxury since their banishment. And while Fíli and Kíli had received an excellent education, their lessons had been mostly about the history, politics and general culture of Dwarves. Exotic fruits had not been part of the curriculum.)

“It’s good,” she said, pushing the fruit over to them. “Try it.”

They did, hesitantly at first, but with more enthusiasm as the mango grew smaller. While they ate it, she pointed out some other unfamiliar fruits. **_“Papaya. Pineapple. Avocado. Banana. Melon.”_** Some of them they recognized from the kitchens this morning. They secretly wondered if Bombur knew what to make of them.

She ended the botany lesson after a while, having made a decision. She got up and said, “Come on. There’s something else I want to show you.”

* * *

This time she crossed Rivendell considerably faster, though fortunately still by path. Five minutes after they had left the garden, she came to a quite abrupt halt in front of another archway, leading to a sort of roofed platform where something looking like a white-toothed black closet stood.

They immediately found out it was a kind of musical instrument, as she tapped a few of the teeth-like tiles and produced a plinking sound. Apparently dissatisfied, she huffed and clambered onto the top of the box, flipping open the lid and rummaging around inside it for a moment. Then she dropped it again and jumped off.

She settled on her flat feet in front of the teeth, like a rabbit, and put her front paws on the teeth.

She played a simple melody, though she didn’t sing, until Kíli came closer. “What is it?”

“It’s a pi-anno,” she said (Elrond had explained it to her a long time ago when she hadn’t been as good with Elvish dialect as she was now). “Want to try?”

She showed him how to produce a few simple tones, then played the more complex version herself.

“What else can you do?” asked Fíli. She smiled, and produced a more up-tempo song that sounded harder than it was. She enjoyed their awed looks.

Elsewhere in Rivendell, unbeknownst to them, Elrond raised his head and smiled, equally sadly and fondly.

After a while, Kíli said, “We play the fiddle, you know. But Uncle wouldn’t let us bring them. Said the outside would be bad for the strings and that we’d be calling unwanted attention to ourselves by playing in the middle of the wilderness.”

She looked at him with an unreadable golden-blue expression, then motioned to a door nearby. “Check in there.”

When they opened the door, they found an extensive collection of instruments inside. Much to their joy, apart from trumpets, tubas, drums and tiled instruments in all shapes and sizes, they also found a wide variety of stringed instruments including fiddles. They picked out two, set down to tune them and then went back.

For the next hour or so, they clowned around musically. She’d play a ditty on the pi-anno and they’d try to copy it on a fiddle or the other way around. The result was always hilarious and she couldn’t help loving all of it.

Finally, Fíli looked at the sun, saw that it was late in the afternoon, and said they should be getting back. The ten minutes back passed in amiable silence.

* * *

Back at camp, she explained to a number of bemused Dwarves that Elves were vegetarians, and as such didn’t have any meat in the kitchens they could get (they’d been looking hopefully at her, but she refused them saying there was nothing wrong with a vegetarian meal every now and then).

“I’d kill for a good steak,” Kíli groaned dramatically.

She not-so-accidentally whacked him on the head with a wing as she stretched them. “Go do that, then.”

He looked at her. “You mean hunting? Won’t they mind?”

She stared pointedly at his bow. “I do it too. As long as you don’t wave it in their faces, they won’t mind…much.”

* * *

She groaned as she heard yet another twig snap.

How did that Dwarf ever manage to catch _anything_ when he was trampling through the woods like a mûmak? In the last ten minutes, he had somehow managed to kick five pebbles, rustle three bushes and step on at least ten twigs.

How was it _possible_ that she had double the feet on the ground, was at least twice as big and _still_ managed to make less noise than him?

SNAP.

 _Urrrrghh_.

“Are you even _trying_ to be quiet?” she asked, not really bothering to keep her voice down because he was chasing away everything within a fifty-metre-radius anyways.

If she’d been less annoyed, maybe she’d seen the hurt in his eyes. Instead, she realized there was only one solution. She groaned again.

“This isn’t working. Hop on.”

He looked warily at her, probably remembering the last time he tried to ride her.

She rolled her eyes. “One-time offer. Hop. On.”

He did. The first thing he noticed was that she was hot, like she was running a boiling fever. The second thing was that as soon as he sat (she didn’t have her wings out, so he was sitting on her back rather than on her shoulders) she…somehow…pulled him out of his body?

It was…indescribably weird. He could no longer feel her muscles moving under him, or the weight of his quiver on his back. Instead, he registered _her_ physical sensations as if they were his own.

He saw the forest through sharp eyes, noticing every little detail. He heard every soft sound the forest had to offer through ears that he could feel moving around. He smelled a thousand smells at once and the mind whose body he was sharing supplied him with their meaning: _Rain. Woodlice. Dead leaves. Fern. Rabbit. Rabbit. Grass. Deer. Puddle. Birch. Ants. Nettles._ They settled on _Deer_ and went to follow that particular trail. He felt padding beneath her soles, allowing for an almost soundless pace across the forest floor. Years of practice had her paws neatly avoiding any sticks or pebbles that were in their path and her body gliding alongside bushes, never moving so much as a leaf.

As _Deer_ grew stronger and the other smells weakened, changed or faded and were replaced with new ones, he became aware of the rest of her body. He felt the source of the heat burning in her chest, and when he asked her she said **_“Fire-inside”_**. He felt strong muscles working as they chased the scent her nose was following. He felt that she was in control, and though she allowed him to experience everything she did, he was, in the end, the passenger. He felt a strange kind of energy flowing through her body, and when he asked about that, she said **_“Magic”_**.

But throughout the whole experience, he felt the way back to his own body as well, like a sort of tunnel or backdoor at the edge of his consciousness. He felt safe, knowing he could return anytime he wanted, and because of that safety, he pushed his limits just a bit too far. He tried to see inside her mind.

Immediately, she turned on him, and suddenly her body felt hostile, and before he well and truly realized it she had surrounded him, pushing him closer and closer against his backdoor. She felt like a suffocating black mass, and in the fraction of a second before he turned and fled back into his own body, he realized just how immensely powerful she was, and it terrified him.


	21. Twenty

**20**

She hadn’t thrown him off after his badly-ended excursion into her body, so he figured that maybe she wasn’t actually angry but rather defensive. She hadn’t let him back in though, and after experiencing the acuity of her superior senses, he felt rather deaf and blind with his own.

She stopped in the middle of the forest, startling him out of his thoughts.

 ** _“Off,”_** she said. Then, after he slid off her back, **_“Come.”_**

He followed her through the trees, trying and failing to mimic her level of stealth, but she seemed satisfied anyway because she didn’t remark. He was so focused on keeping quiet that he almost stepped on her tail when she stopped, one forepaw suspended in the air, nose focused on something he couldn’t see.

He carefully made his way up until he was next to her head, and then he finally realized what her stance reminded him of. It was similar to some dogs he knew, that were called “pointers” and were bred not to attack the game but to point to it so the hunter could take the shot. He followed her gaze and noticed a herd of deer, standing amongst the trees. He counted one young buck and three does, one of them with a calf.

Silently, he pulled an arrow from the quiver on his back, staring at the deer, and began to pull back the string.

 ** _“Which one?”_** she asked him soundlessly.

 _“Doe,”_ he said, referring to one of the calf-less does. She nodded, pulling her legs into a low crouch while never taking her eyes off the herd. She’d probably run after the doe if he didn’t manage to bring it down immediately. He huffed quietly. The doe was standing perfectly, left flank turned towards him, and a single arrow to the chest behind her left foreleg would kill her before she hit the ground. He’d show her.

He pulled the arrow back, aimed, and released. The moment the arrow left the string, he knew it was a perfect shot, and he watched with immense satisfaction as it zoomed at the herd and buried itself behind the doe’s left foreleg.

The next moment though, that satisfaction was replaced with shock, because at exactly the same time his arrow found its mark, his hunting partner sprang into motion and covered the distance between them and their prey with a speed that easily outmatched any horse he’d ever seen. What was more, she didn’t make for the doe he’d hit.

Once close enough, she launched herself onto the back of the buck and, avoiding the antlers trying to poke her eyes out, closed her jaws around its neck. The buck ran for a few more seconds, bleeding down his flank and neck from her teeth and claws tearing through his skin, staggered, and fell. His legs stopped flailing and his breathing slowly ceased, but she didn’t let go until his eyes had gone glassy and empty.

It was an excellent kill, swift and precise. He didn’t fail to appreciate the setup either, because he realized that if she had moved a fraction of a second earlier, she would have spooked the deer and he might have missed. A fraction later, and the deer might have been too quick to catch up on. Her timing had been perfect. He doubted she could keep up that astounding velocity for very long anyway.

* * *

Once she was certain the buck’s fae had departed, she released him and sat back, bringing up each paw in turn to clean it. It was better to do it right after a kill than later. When blood dried up, it got itchy.

As she used her tongue to clean every claw and in between her toes, she watched Kíli pull his arrow out of his doe and clean it before sticking it back into the quiver.

“Nice job,” he said as he came over. Her eyes flashed golden in appreciation. Paws cleaned, she looked down at the buck at her feet. She didn’t collect trophies, but she knew Dwarves did, because some of them had shown her teeth and claws from animals they’d killed. Even though Kíli hadn’t actually brought down the buck, she was impressed with his marksmanship. She grabbed one of the antlers near the base with her teeth, then yanked and tore until it finally came off and dropped it at Kíli’s feet.

He blinked in confusion, then seemed to understand and picked it up. “Thanks,” he said, turning it in his hands, “but…it’s not very practical while traveling.” She hummed approvingly. “Thanks for the help though. Maybe, after we reclaim Erebor, we could go again?” She wagged her tail twice, thumping on the forest floor.

* * *

She decided to fly rather than carry the dead animals back to Rivendell. When Kíli asked why, she said “Remember what I said about waving it in their faces? They don’t mind me hunting, but strolling through Rivendell with two dead deer might be pushing our luck a little far.”

So she pushed the buck on his back and grabbed each of his legs with a paw of her own. Leaving Kíli to guard the doe, she hoisted herself and the buck into the air. Thankfully, she thought as she flapped her wings to stay airborne, Rivendell was not far away. Flying with a large animal like this was exhausting.

Her mind started to wander. Kíli had been heavier than she’d expected based on his height, but not uncomfortably so. As long as he didn’t stray into places he wasn’t supposed to go, she wouldn’t mind a next time. She’d liked having a hunting partner again. It reminded her of– _No_.

She shook her head and flapped on. When she reached the Dwarves, she unceremoniously dumped the deer next to Bombur, causing him to jump and fall over. She rolled her eyes and turned to fly back to Kíli.

After retrieving the doe and then Kíli in a similar fashion (except that she only grabbed his arms and not his legs), she quickly scavenged a meal out of the heap of vegetables Bombur was cooking with. Then she tore off on of the buck’s muscular legs, ignoring Bombur’s glaring, and stripped it until there was nothing but bare bone left, at which point she abandoned it in a bit of a rush to save Bofur’s teeth by explaining that only the _inside_ of a pistachio nut was edible and you had to get it _out_ of the hard shell before eating it. She left them to amuse themselves by trying to crack open the almost-closed ones and spent the rest of the evening fishing out the tasty marrow from inside the bone and watching the Dwarves one by one leave for bed or nod off where they sat.

* * *

The next morning, the Dwarves awoke to a rather unusual sight, that is, more unusual than they’d gotten used to.

She was lying in a tree, on her back against the trunk, tail waving gently, nothing unusual there. What was unusual was the open book, propped up on her belly. She was reading it with a concentrated expression on her face, and the contrast between the civilized book and her wild looks was so great they couldn’t help but blink and stare at her for several seconds or more.

She was aware of it, of course, but chose to ignore them in favour of reading the book. It was about sea mammals and it always amused her to see whether the writings of Elves agreed with her own observations. If she found something she didn’t feel was right, she’d tell Elrond. He would always look at her with a quizzical expression on his face and say he would pass it on to the author.

The Company left her in peace until after breakfast, and then she found herself being approached by what might just be the most timid members in the whole group.

After a lot of shuffling and whispering, Bilbo was the one to ask her.

“Could you, erm– T-that is if it’s not too much trouble, could you maybe take us to the, um, library?” the Hobbit asked shyly with a vague gesturing to himself and Ori, who was nodding fervently in the background. She stretched, leapt down, put the book on her back between her wings so it wouldn’t slide off and set off towards the library.

* * *

She had been spending time with every member of the Company at one time or another, especially Fíli and Kíli, whom she was developing a careful friendship with, but her interactions with Ori had primarily consisted of her whistling down some bird or other for him to draw and she was curious about him.

Bilbo, on the other hand, she had barely spoken to on the whole trip. Not that she wasn’t curious about him too, but Thorin plainly didn’t like him very much and he was the alpha. It would not be wise to let him see her getting too close to the Hobbit, so she mostly just ignored him, keeping her distance. Which wasn’t that hard, honestly, considering there were thirteen others for her to talk to if she wanted a chat.

But now it was only the three of them, so she slowly dropped the carefully maintained distance between her and Bilbo. She trusted Gandalf, but she had been wondering what in the world could possibly have compelled the Wizard to enlist him as a member of the Company. The incident with the trolls had given her part of an answer, and it had piqued her curiosity. Clearly, the Hobbit was more than he seemed.

He didn’t look like it right now though, walking next to her with Ori in awkward silence. To break the ice, she nudged his shoulder with her nose and asked: “Why the library?”

(Talking through her mind, as she was getting used to doing with Fíli and Kíli, would probably freak him out.)

“Just, er, curiosity,” the Hobbit stammered, apparently terrified she’d said something to him. ‘I’ve, um, heard tales of the great knowledge to be found in Elvish books.”

She turned her eyes a dark green. “You do know most books are written in Sindarin, don’t you?”

Now he finally looked at her, apparently shocked out of his shyness. “Really?!”

She rolled her eyes at him, letting them turn golden mixed with purple. “No, not really. I was kidding.”

Ori chuckled, then said: “You can read Elvish though, can you?”

She turned her head at him, eyes pale blue. “What makes you say that?”

He pointed at the book on her back. “That’s not Common Tongue.”

 _Observant_. She smiled at him, then turned back to Bilbo. “Seriously though, most of the books are written in the Common Tongue so you should be fine.”

They talked more freely after that. She learned that Ori's brothers fought constantly, except when something or someone was threatening their younger brother. Then they formed a united front to protect him, Ori said with an exasperated smile. Privately, she thought it was nice when someone looked out for you, but she didn't voice that thought out loud, afraid of any questions it might lead to.

From Bilbo she learned that it had been a very good idea not to show herself back in Hobbiton. If she'd been seen, there wouldn't just have been a racket, he assured her, there would have been a 'full-scale panic'. Apparently Hobbits were petrified of things they didn't know and that might threaten their comfortable and ordered lives. It made her wonder even more why Gandalf had chosen a Hobbit as the fifteenth member, but she decided not to ask Bilbo. It might insult him.

She jumped onto a high ledge in front of them, then paused. When she’d been with Fíli and Kíli, she’d just taken her normal route, since Elvish paths meandered a bit too much for her taste, and they hadn’t shown any problems with clambering after her. Ori and especially Bilbo didn’t seem as athletically able, so she faced the slight dilemma of either taking her shortcut or leading them on an easier accessible, but far longer route. After a moment of thought, she lowered her tail down the ledge, then waited for either of them to get the idea.

Ori was first, as she expected he would. He hesitantly put his hand around her tail, just above the round knob on the end, and quickly added his other when she began slowly pulling him up and off the ground. She raised him to her level, then carefully placed his dangling feet on the ground next to her.

Bilbo followed suit, and she was surprised to feel the strength with which his hands tightened around her tail. She pulled him up faster than Ori, trusting him to know the drill after witnessing it the first time.

The large, airy building that was the library stood in front of them, and after she pushed the door open she smiled silently at the reverent expressions with which they regarded the endless rows of tall, dusty bookcases.

* * *

It turned into a rather pleasant afternoon. Ori settled down with a book on tropical birds, Bilbo submerged himself in a thick work about Elvish culture (about the only book he could find on that subject written in the Common Tongue) and she read on about whales, seals and dolphins, occasionally smiling sadly at the author’s failure to comprehend the complex social nature of the animals they wrote about.

She spent the evening with Bombur, who, finally in possession of adequate supplies, was quickly starting to turn every meal into a feast. He told her all about herbs, spices and other additions that “made good food even better”.

She recognized every herb he showed her, though she didn’t know all the names, but she wasn’t as familiar with spices, so she sniffed everything he held in front of her and committed name, scent and taste to memory.

Unfortunately, the pepper he showed her went up her nose and made her sneeze. A metre-long jet of flame burst from her nostrils, torching several herbs before she put it out with a flick of her tail. Upon seeing the expression on Bombur’s face, she thought it prudent to leave his presence immediately and go find replacements for the herbs she’d accidently roasted.

When she brought a pile of weeds back later that evening, it apparently still wasn’t enough to get her out of being whacked on the head with a wooden ladle. Which, she thought indignantly as she rubbed the sore spot on top of her head, was quite unfair, because how was she supposed to know pepper would make her sneeze like that?


	22. Twenty-one

**21**

_He hears a roar and he knows he’s coming, he’s coming again and he can’t do a thing about it. He looks out over Dale and sees his shadow on the ground, a dark mass gliding towards them, leaving death and destruction in its wake. He turns around and screams into the Mountain: “DRAGON!” even as he knows there’s nothing they can do._

_They’re powerless against him, but they’re Dwarves and this is their home and so they charge at the beast when he crashes through the front gate, ruin and smoke at his tail. They scream their war-cries in the useless hope that it will frighten the beast away._

_Smaug pays them no heed, their sharpest swords and spears mere tickles against his impenetrable scales. He only narrowly avoids being stepped on, but he sees his comrades, his friends, his_ brothers _not being so fortunate, sees them getting crushed by the Dragon like the ants they are to him._

_He runs against the stream of people trying to get out, to get as far away from the monster as possible, with only one thought on his mind: his grandfather, the King. He has to save the King._

_He passes his little sister, crying and frightened, and sends her outside, to lead their people to safety. He looks for Frerin, but his younger brother is nowhere to be seen and the sickening feeling in his stomach doubles._

_He knows, instinctively, what the Dragon is going for. The treasure. The great hoard of gold and silver and gems that lies amassed deep inside the Mountain. He knows, because of the gold-sickness consuming him, that the King will be there too._

_So he runs, even as his feet are burning and his lungs are screaming with every smoky breath he takes. And he prays to all the Valar:_ Get me there in time, _please_ get me there in time…

_He’s too late. When he rounds the last corner, his heart plummets into his feet at the sight of his brother and a handful of loyal warriors, making their last stand in front of the gate leading to the treasury. The Dragon stands between him and them, his chest lighting up red as he prepares to breathe fire._

_He cries out, causing Frerin to look at him. His little brother smiles at him, sad and knowing and brave, and they look into each other’s eyes as the Dragon opens his maw and lets out an inferno that consumes the little insects that are in his way._

_The_ scream _Frerin makes as he’s burning alive tears through his heart and_ startled him awake. In all the years since the Fall of Erebor, he had never managed to forget his brother’s scream, carrying it with him everywhere he went, reminding him of the promises he made to avenge him.

He groaned, realizing his face is covered in sweat. At least he didn’t cry out loud this time. He shuddered at the sound of Frerin’s scream ringing through his mind again, feeling an overwhelming, scorching hatred for the Dragon that had robbed him of his home, friends and family.

He got up and went over to one of the sprinkling fountains. He splashed cold water onto his face, cleaning off the sweat and finally waking him up properly. The Company was still fast asleep, as was the rest of Rivendell. The only sounds to be heard were the fountain trickling gently and the distant sound of the river below. And the birds. It was as if every bird in the vicinity had gathered here for their morning concert. Now that he’d noticed it, it was impossible to ignore the whistles, chirps and trills coming from all around him.

He rounded a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. He really should be used to this by now, he thought. Yet she still regularly managed to surprise him.

She was sitting in the middle of a square lined with trees. Those trees were packed with birds of all shapes and sizes, and they seemed to be producing the songs filling the air. On second glance, however, if not half then at least a third of the sounds were produced by the four-legged creature sitting amongst them.

Looking at her, he was startled to realize how little he actually knew about her. Thanks to Ursel, he was getting to know some parts of her personality pretty well, but large portions of her remained uncharted. He had learned by now, along with the rest of the Company, that she did not take kindly to people asking about her past, and she didn’t disclose much by herself.

Although he would never admit it, it had probably been a good idea from Gandalf to have her keep some things a secret from him for a while. If she’d introduced herself to him as she was, he probably _would_ have sent her away based on his past experiences with dragons. But he knew, despite her huge wings and fiery breath, that she wasn’t a dragon.

But if not a dragon, then what? As he looked at her now, so out of sorts and yet seeming to belong, he couldn’t help but wonder. What kind of creature was she? Where had she come from? How come no one had ever seen or heard about her kind before? Why was she so sensitive about her past? Why had she decided to come with them?

So many unanswered questions. She was a mystery, and the only thing he was certain of was that she wasn’t evil. Which at least settled his doubts, for the time being.

He must have made some noise, because she turned one long tapering ear towards him, followed by the rest of her head, the birdsong all but ceasing. Upon seeing him, her eyes turned from purple to light brown and she rumbled a friendly **_“Good morning”_** at him. He sent her a quick flash of friendly thought in return.

He wondered vaguely if she knew what he had been thinking about, but dismissed the thought. She would have reacted differently if she had, and besides, once he had figured out how the link connecting them through the red stone in his pocket worked, the first thing he did was block her from seeing his mind, something he had gotten so used to over the past few weeks that he was doing it constantly and unconsciously by now. He didn’t think she minded. She did it too. The only thing that siphoned through sometimes was a particularly strong feeling or emotion.

He wondered if she’d felt his nightmare. Probably not, judging from the way she went back to whistling to the birds.

It wasn’t as if either of them had wanted the link to happen, but here it was and neither of them knew how to resolve it, so they just made the best of it.

In moments of complete honesty, he admitted to himself that it was quite useful sometimes, especially since she usually ranged far ahead or behind the Company.

Suddenly, the bird sounds stopped and the birds departed in a single flock from the trees. She spread her wings and followed them into the air. Mahal only knew where she was off to.

He watched her go until she banked left and disappeared from view. Then he turned around, all thoughts of seeing if the Company had woken up yet and maybe getting something to eat vanishing from his mind as he saw Elrond standing under a graceful archway behind him, wearing an elegant robe embroidered with gold, his eyes trained on where Skyfire had gone.

After a moment, the Elf (or Half-Elf, he recalled) lowered his eyes and looked at Thorin.

“I would like a word,” he said gravely.

Warily, the Dwarf nodded, and Elrond turned around and walked away, leading him along. They walked for a good ten minutes, and the Elf never so much as glanced at him. Just when he was about to decide he was done here and started wondering what Bombur might whip up for breakfast, he found himself on a large balcony overlooking the valley, and Elrond finally stopped and turned around.

“You need to know what you are dealing with,” he stated simply.

“What are you talking about?” Thorin asked, although they both knew the answer.

“Her.”

“What about her?” _Maybe I’m finally getting some answers…_

“She likes you.”

Thorin almost snorted. Instead, he raised an eyebrow. He had not gotten the impression that she liked him so much. Other members of the Company, yes. His sister-sons? Definitely. But him?

Elrond saw the unasked question in his eyes. He put his hands on the balustrade and sighed, looking off into the distance. “She has many names. She is Dreamcatcher, Deathseer, Tonguespeaker. But we also call her Mirror, for she will reflect back what she is given. As such, her feelings cannot be deduced by interaction alone. The fact that she has accompanied you this far tells me she has taken a liking to you, no matter how she might act towards you or anyone else in your Company.”

“She has signed a contract,” Thorin countered. “She is obligated to come with us.”

“If she had wanted to leave, a piece of paper with her name on it would not have stopped her. Contracts do not bind her, nor do promises or oaths. She is with you because you have, for the time being, gained her loyalty. Be grateful, for there is great power and wisdom within her. Should she ever come to you with black eyes and say something that is not a jest, you would do well to remember it.”

Silence fell for a moment, and then Elrond answered the question that had been hanging above their conversation ever since it began. “We found her, many years ago. She had been injured somehow, and we took her in to nurse her back to health and to learn more about her, for she was unlike anything any of us had ever seen. At first, we had to earn her trust as we would a wild animal, for she would not allow us close to her. Later, when she grew more comfortable around us, and began exhibiting signs of intelligence, we named her and taught her our language and others after that, for she showed a great talent in learning them.

“Despite this, she has never told us where she came from. We suspect, however, that she has spent at least part of her life among wolves, for she behaved a lot like one, especially in the beginning. Even now, some of her social behaviour very much resembles that of a wolf. Since I presume she will accompany you further, I will lend you one of our books on the subject, so that you can begin to understand certain aspects that you may find…puzzling.”

Thorin took a moment to let the information sink in. Then he asked: “Where did you find her?”

For a moment, Elrond’s face turned blank and his eyes grew absent and misty, as if he no longer registered his surroundings. Before Thorin could say anything though, the Elf brought his hand to his forehead. “You must excuse me, I am afraid I cannot remember. My memory is no longer what it once was.”

Thorin paused. He had never heard of an Elf experiencing memory loss, but then again how much did he really know about them? They lived immortally long lives, so surely they did not remember everything… Or maybe it was his Human half, weakening his mind?

Yet he couldn’t help but feel a slight tingling in his stomach, a gut feeling that this might not be a natural occurrence. He managed to put it away for the moment in favour of focusing on his conversation partner who, after all, seemed fine now.

“Any other advice on how to…deal with her?” he asked, not quite managing to not make it sound like dealing with a nuisance. She intrigued him…but she was also a lot of work.

If the Elf picked it up, he didn’t comment. “She likes games. Puzzles, riddles especially, things she has to use her brain for.”

Hm. Personally, Thorin was not overly fond of riddles, lacking the alternative thinking required to solve them, but there were several toymakers in his Company and he knew for a fact that Bifur had brought some puzzles with him to pass the time. Maybe he could persuade him to share.

He realized the Elf was watching him intently, and he had half a thought to ask him about Skyfire’s telepathic abilities, but decided not to. It might lead to unwanted questions and he didn’t want to tell anyone about Ursel, mostly because he didn’t know how he felt about that himself yet.

Instead, he said, “Thank you. Please excuse me,” and Elrond nodded without a word. He turned around and walked back to the Company, lost in thought. The conversation had left him with a lot to think about.

* * *

Of course she had felt his nightmare. Not so much the images themselves, but she had sensed feelings of fear, desperation, anger, and a cold hatred so strong it wasn’t hard to imagine what the nightmare had been about. She could have asked him about it, but in the end, it wasn’t her business, she thought as she tried to manoeuvre her long tongue into a prickly bush the birds had shown her to reach the sweet berries deep inside while avoiding the sharp thorns.

She had demons of her own to wrestle with, as did he. And as long as everybody stuck to their own demons and did not get involved with anybody else’s, everything worked out just fine.


	23. Twenty-two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are a few riddles featured later in this chapter. Because I personally like to try solving them myself without being given the answer straight away, I changed the anwers to numbers in the story. You can find the answers corresponding to the numbers at the bottom.

**22**

When she returned later that evening, she found the Dwarves engaged in an unfamiliar activity. They appeared to be tying knots into each other’s hair.

 _Oh, wait._ The word was ‘braiding’, she recalled, and the knots were called ‘braids’. She’d observed the Elves doing it too, but nothing quite like this. The Company looked more like a group of monkeys grooming each other than anything else. She saw Nori braiding Dori’s hair while Dori did Ori’s. She saw both Bofur and Bombur working away at Bifur’s wild salt-and-pepper mane as the Dwarf himself fiddled with something in his hands.

She didn’t understand why they put so much work and time into their hairstyles. After all, Elves busied themselves with little else than art and knowledge, both activities perfectly pursuable with long hair. They only put little braids in their hair to keep it out of their eyes or because they liked it.

But the Dwarves…

She didn’t know what lives they usually led, but while traveling under all kinds of weather and fighting off Orcs and wargs she didn’t see how long hair was anything but a hindrance. And wouldn’t simply cutting it off be a much easier solution than all this intricate plucking and twisting?

The only ones not engaged in any hair-related activity were Bilbo and Gandalf. The Hobbit was sitting in a comfy chair, immersed in a book, and the Wizard was leaned back on a couch with his eyes closed. She knew from experience that he probably wasn’t sleeping though.

Then her eyes found Thorin, who was braiding Fíli’s hair and talking to Kíli while wearing what was both easily the tenderest and least brooding expression she had ever seen on his face. She had been planning to ask either of the young Dwarves what all the braiding was about, but the peaceful scene in front of her caused a lump to appear in her throat and she couldn’t find it in her to disturb the moment.

She looked for another Dwarf that might be willing to answer her question and her gaze fell on Bofur. She’d talked to him before about all sorts of things, but then he had always had a pipe in his mouth. Hoping he’d be as relaxed and agreeable without it, she carefully made her way over to him and gently nudged his arm with her nose to get his attention.

“Hey there,” he said, nimble fingers halting for a moment as he smiled at her and then resuming their work.

Her ears perked up and she made a questioning sound, a sort of ascending rumble that was her equivalent of “Can I ask a question?”

It wasn’t the first time he heard it and he recognized it immediately. “Go ahead.”

She sniffed at the rough strands of hair in his hands. It tickled, so she pulled back quickly. “What’s with the braiding?” she asked.

Immediately, Bofur launched into an explanation of the various braids and their meanings in equally various situations. Most of this monologue was lost on her, mainly because she didn’t know the different kinds of braids and as such had no idea what a ‘fishtail’ braid or a ‘waterfall’ braid was and what the differences between the two entailed. She did gather that braids were of more significance than she had previously thought. Apparently, braiding _was_ a social activity, but it was done by either a family member or a close friend, and the complexity of the braids symbolized the closeness of the social relation that had put it there.

She thought about that for a moment, looking at the hairstyles around her. Dori, Nori and Ori were brothers, so it made sense for their braids to be more complex than Bifur’s, because Bofur and Bombur were his cousins. Same went for Óin and Glóin. So far, so good.

Her gaze wandered to Balin and Dwalin, who were each combing their own hair and leaving each other’s completely alone. It would seem there were exceptions.

“Some place more importance on it than others,” Bofur said, following her eyes and answering her unspoken question.

She looked at Thorin, Fíli and Kíli. Bofur looked too and his smile faded a little. He bent towards her and she turned an ear towards him to allow him to whisper something without the others hearing.

“Thorin considers it a bit of a waste of time for someone to braid his hair. And he’s not really close with people…except maybe his sister. She understands him better than anyone,” the Dwarf whispered. Then his voice dropped to a faint breathing, and she had to strain her ear to catch the last bits. “He does use the opportunity to get some family time with Fíli and Kíli though.”

Her eyes turned a light blue as she thought about that. Thorin was a very closed person, not allowing anyone near him – _just like you,_ a little voice inside her said, but she quickly pushed it away – but he clearly did love his nephews. Maybe it was easier to use a little detour to show someone you loved them than to flat-out tell them.

She’d never seen Kíli with any elaborate braidings in his hair though, and when she pointed this out to Bofur the Dwarf chuckled and said: “He can’t sit still long enough, doesn’t have the patience for it. Which is odd, considering how good a hunter he is.”

She hummed thoughtfully. She didn’t find it odd, actually, she recognized it. When hunting, one was focused on something, be it tracking or observing or tensing before a kill. She herself could sit motionless for hours watching a flower open, enjoying the way the petals unfurled as they took in the sunlight.

But actual boring waiting, without anything to occupy her time? Unbearable. She could see why active, enthusiastic Kíli couldn’t sit through an hour of picking at his hair. She wouldn’t either.

As that thought entered her mind, she noticed that Bifur did not seem bored at all. She had noticed before he was turning something in his hands, and now she lowered her head to take a closer look. She saw a gleam of metal and went to sniff at it.

Before she knew it, Bifur had realized what she was doing and held out a hand to show her the mysterious object resting on his palm.

She looked at it, sniffed, tilted her head to the side in confusion, and sniffed again, not sure what to make of it. It appeared to be two long, thin metal cylinders, that is, she saw four endings, twisting and turning into each other so that they formed one intertwining piece of metal. She could barely see where one cylinder ended and the other began, let alone discern the purpose of the contraption.

Bifur grunted something in Dwarvish and she looked up at him, completely lost. More than ever, she hated not being able to understand him. She briefly considered looking into his mind, her curiosity outweighing her respect for privacy, when Bofur fortunately jumped in.

“It’s a puzzle,” he said. She turned her head to look at him. “You see, you have to try to separate the two pieces.”

Bifur nodded, demonstrating by doing something incomprehensible to the clump of metal and then showing her two identical pieces of metal, one on each palm. Her eyes widened comically and he chuckled, before chucking the two pieces into a bag standing next to him and fishing out two more puzzles. He held one out to her.

She sat down on her haunches, splaying her tail out behind her to keep her balance and using her front paws to take the puzzle from him. She fiddled with it for a moment, but soon found her paws, despite retracting her nails, lacking the fine motor control necessary to fix the puzzle. After nearly dropping it, she put it down, sighing in defeat. _Damn it. I need fingers._

* * *

What happened next had Bifur dropping his puzzle, Bofur the half-finished braid, and all Dwarves in the vicinity their jaws. They had been travelling with Skyfire for the past few weeks, and grown used to her doing things they had previously thought beyond the realm of possibility. But now, before their very eyes, she revealed an entirely new dimension of impossibleness.

Her snout disappeared and her face flattened. Her body shrunk while her hind legs lengthened, and her fur retreated into her skin, except on her head, where it grew explosively and the long tresses covered almost her entire upper body. Her paws reshaped until they resembled hands and feet. Her wings changed too, reforming and turning transparent.

The entire metamorphosis had taken up less than a minute. Where, until very recently, had been a wolf-like creature the size of a pony with wings like a dragon, now crouched a female human-like figure whose age was anyone’s guess.

No one could mistake her for being human, though. She still had her tail, though it was slightly shorter and the knob on the end was smaller, more like a tuft. Two pair of large transparent dragonfly-like wings sat on her back, starting between her shoulder blades and stretching out about a metre each. She had smooth, pale skin and a matted mass of hair the same colour her fur had been, falling down her back, around her shoulders and into her face. Which had changed too, but not nearly as much as the rest of her body. She’d kept her long, pointed ears, though they were set slightly lower on her head so they stuck out more sideways instead of straight up. And when she reached up to push some hair behind her ears with hands equipped with nails that weren’t claws but not entirely normal nails either, she revealed a human mouth, a small nose and large purple eyes.

Those were different. They had gotten used to her eyes continuously changing colour, depending on how she was feeling, and had even begun matching certain colours to different emotions. But now, despite the fact that she was clearly nervous from the way her shoulders hunched and her ears turned back, her eyes stayed the same, a fierce purple no human eye had ever achieved.

Not for the first time, nor would it be the last, they wondered what in the world she was.

No one said anything, dazed, as she continued fiddling with the metal puzzle as if shapeshifting was a perfectly ordinary thing to do, occasionally pausing to swipe some hair away from her eyes so she could see what she was doing. Unfortunately, the blonde waterfall was so tangled it wouldn’t stay put, and with a huff, she rose to her feet.

She stumbled backwards immediately, flailing her arms to keep from toppling over while her wings started buzzing to push her back onto her feet. Eventually, she managed a stable, if slightly wobbly, stance.

Her action broke the spell of silence that had been over the Company for the past few minutes, for standing up revealed some more feminine attributes of her new body. They hastily averted their eyes while Bofur went rummaging in his pack, finding a spare blanket that he waved in her direction, looking anywhere but at her.

She looked slightly bemused but accepted the blanket, wrapping it around her under her armpits and pressing her upper arms against her body to keep it in place. Once everything was properly covered, she dryly stated, “You can look.”

One by one, they turned to gape at her. She simply crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at them.

Now, they weren’t entirely inexperienced anymore, having been surprised very often these past few weeks, so the first question asked (by Bofur) was no longer “How?” but instead “Why?”

 _At least that’s an intelligent question._ “I needed fingers,” she simply said, as if that was sufficient explanation. For her, it was. She also knew that there were other shapeshifters in the world besides her (although the specifics differed slightly), so she considered this less unusual than certain other things she did.

She blew some hair out of her face, but a slight breeze pushed it right back. She groaned, annoyance sparking up again. “Does anyone have a pair of scissors?”

In the blink of an eye, the expression on every Dwarven face changed from astounded to horrified. She even heard some gasps and a “Mahal!”

 _Now what!?_ “A knife would work too?” she tried weakly. She’d recalled, as Bofur offered her a blanket, that nudity was considered inappropriate in public among virtually all humans (not that she minded, but they were clearly uncomfortable), but she was racking her brain to figure out what she’d done this time. The Dwarves often confused her as much as she puzzled them, but she couldn’t think of anything that explained why they were looking at her as if she’d just asked for one of their ears.

At last, it was Fíli who overcame his horror and explained to her in a very clipped voice that, among Dwarves, cutting off one’s hair was apparently **not done** , with a whole list of social complexities tacked onto it. She had half a mind to remind him that she wasn’t a Dwarf and as such didn’t adhere to any of their customs, hair-related or otherwise, but then she remembered she was trying to fit in and decided on a prickly “What do you suggest I do to keep it out of my way, then?”

A short pause fell, broken by Kíli clearing the ground in front of him, gesturing to it and offering “I could put a braid in it, if you want?”

She hesitated for a split second, but it wasn’t as if she had much of an alternative and she _really_ wanted to finish the puzzle, so she flapped her way over to him, not entirely trusting her halved amount of legs, and crossed them in the air before descending in front of Kíli so she didn’t have to go through the trouble of trying to fold them onto the ground without falling.

As she tried to untangle the puzzle, he tried to untangle her hair, though, he thought, ‘tame’ might be a better word for it. Matted and twisted as it was, it reached down to her waist, and it was impossible to say how long it would be once properly smoothed out. He soon found the task too big for him alone and enlisted his brother’s and Dori’s help. All three set to work, armed with wooden combs, while she tried her hand at the puzzle, occasionally growling or yelping and turning her ears back every time they accidentally pulled too hard.

Unfortunately, she turned out to be rather good at the metal puzzles. Once she solved the first one with a little help from Bofur (“If you have to use force, you’re not doing it right.”) she sifted through the little bag quite quickly and although she amused herself for a while after that by watching the metal pieces slide in and out of each other, there were still quite a few impressive-looking tangles to work at by the time she got bored.

She started fidgeting. Which wasn’t helpful when the task at hand already required a lot of focus and care. Also her wings, which had been drooping down onto the ground and which the Dwarves had been very careful not to step on, started twitching into their faces while her tail swished along the ground.

The Company began hastily searching for ways to keep her busy, for they all had great respect for hair in general and to watch such a long and tangled mess being combed out into a smooth waterfall was nothing short of eye candy. To everyone’s surprise, it was Thorin who came with the solution.

“How about a game of riddles?” he suggested grumpily from his place by the fire.

If she’d been in her animal form, her eyes would have most certainly turned a light blue in surprise. Even now that they stayed purple, surprise was clearly written across her features, as was the case with most other Company members. He was keeping his mind firmly closed from her when she asked (her ears really had stayed the same) because, given how secretive she was about her past, he didn’t think she would appreciate his talk with Elrond.

He was spared further, more insisting inquiry by Bofur calling out the first riddle.

 _“Young I am tall, old I am short_  
When I take a breath, it becomes my death   
What am I?”

Though she had never heard it before, that clearly didn’t go for everyone. Bofur had barely finished speaking before Nori called out the answer, to general cheers: “1!”

Balin was next. She leaned a bit forward to listen.

_“What is not, has never been, but will always come?”_

That one took a little longer. There was silence for a few seconds, until Glóin said: “2?”

Balin smiled and nodded.

Before anyone else could speak up, she said:

 _“What swims in the ocean, but does not get wet_  
Can take any form, yet not be met   
What follows a bird, but cannot fly   
And disappears under the midnight sky?”

“This all pertains to one thing, right?” Ori asked.

“Right.”

There was some muttering as the Dwarves repeated the riddle for themselves. She grinned expectantly. Then the Hobbit, who was sitting a little on the outskirts of the group, spoke up and said in a matter-of-fact sort of tone: “3.”

“Mm-hm,” she nodded at him. She yelped as Fíli pulled on a particularly resisting knot. “Sorry,” he muttered.

Bilbo, having guessed the right answer, became a little more invested in the game.

 _“The poor have it, the rich lack it_  
When you eat it, it kills you   
What is it?”

She tilted her head to the side in thought. To her left, Óin muttered “Poison…?”

She threw him a scathing look. “Do the poor have poison? The poor don’t have any…” she trailed off, thinking. “4?”

Bilbo nodded fervently. She smirked.

_“A white box lacking key or lid  
With golden treasure inside it hid.”_

“5,” grunted Dwalin after a short pause. She nodded, a little surprised.

They kept exchanging riddles until, after at least half an hour, Kíli leaned back with a sigh and proclaimed: “Phew…done!”

She looked down over her shoulder and smiled at the golden waterfall falling down her back and even piling a little on the ground. It hadn’t been this tangle-free in a very long time.

Kíli took a moment to regain his breath and stretch his fingers, then asked his brother for a hair bead and began braiding. She purred as she felt his fingers move across her scalp as he separated it into three strands and began braiding a single braid down her back. It was so long that by the time he was halfway, she turned around to see how a braid worked. It didn’t seem too complicated, if she was being honest.

When he at last finished by putting the hair bead and she stood up, the very end of the braid trailed down to her thighs. She twirled a few times, appreciating the way it stayed out of her way, before letting the blanket fall to the ground and changing back. Once she was properly standing on four paws again, she handed the bead back with a well-meant “Thanks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here are the answers to the riddles:  
> 1\. A candle  
> 2\. Tomorrow/the future  
> 3\. A shadow  
> 4\. Nothing  
> 5\. An egg (duh!)


	24. Twenty-three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the slight delay, but now we're all caught up. From now on, I'll attempt to upload the story both here and on fanfiction.net, as soon as I've written another chapter.  
> Enjoy!

**23**

As the days passed, she found herself getting restless, wondering when they would leave again. The Dwarves didn’t seem to be in any hurry, quite happily parasiting off the Elves’ hospitality and patience. Both of which were stretching thin, she had learned from eavesdropping on a conversation between Lindir and Elrond while silently observing the Dwarves skinny-dipping in one of Rivendell’s prized fountains (she had promptly decided to only take drinks from upriver from now on). Elrond had been very civil in explaining to a concerned Lindir that while he acknowledged the severe drain the Dwarves represented on Rivendell’s resources, it was not yet decided when they would depart. But she knew the Half-Elf’s expressions well enough to know from the frown appearing between his eyes as he noticed the abuse of his fountain that he would like the Dwarves to leave sooner rather than later.

She broached the subject that same afternoon to Thorin, after luring him away from their rooms to show him Rivendell’s hidden wonders. He had been the only one who had managed to supress his curiosity about the settlement, though she knew it had more to do with stubbornness than lack of interest. The others gave in one by one and asked her to show them around. She was very deliberate in taking them along, showing everyone another part of the valley. She led Ori, Bilbo and Balin to the library, Dwalin and Glóin to the armoury, Oín to the healers and Fíli and Kíli to the stables, where they borrowed two ponies and raced her around the plains. None of the Elvish horses could keep up with her, though they could run longer.

But Thorin was the only one she took to her favourite part of Rivendell.

As everything here, it had an Elvish name, but she didn’t mention it to Thorin, instead translating it directly to the Hall of Eye-blinking. Though she saw his brow furrowing, he didn’t ask her why the place was called that. It became apparent the minute they stepped though the small, wooden door.

The Dwarf had assumed, from the looks of the unimpressive door in the cliffside, that she was taking him to a storage or something. Instead, they found themselves in a spacious cave, which was shrouded in darkness after she closed the door behind them, except for a single beam of sunlight coming in through a tiny crack high in the wall to their right.

As the echo of the door closing died away, she walked over to where the beam of light hit what looked like a circular plate of some sort. She flipped the plate, revealing a shining glass mirror, which caught the sunlight and reflected it further into the cave. The beam bounced off dozens of mirrors embedded in the walls, floor and ceiling, lighting up the whole cave in the process.

Thorin was unable to keep his mouth from falling open. She grinned at him. **_“Neat trick, huh?”_**

 _“Astounding,”_ he said. Somehow it seemed wrong to break the utter silence hanging in the cave by speaking up.

He walked over to her to examine the mirror, the sound of his footsteps magnified by the cave’s echoes. _“This will only work a few hours a day, at most.”_

**_“We won’t be in here that long.”_ **

She turned away from the mirror and walked deeper into the cave. **_“The magic of the Elves has given them the ability to create things that could not have been accomplished otherwise. Things that should be impossible but aren’t. Some are scattered across Rivendell, and if you pay close attention you may see them. But the very best ones are kept in here.”_**

She gestured with a wing, and for the first time he noticed that it wasn’t exactly empty. There were pictures hanging on the walls, and mysterious objects resting on pedestals or in alcoves cut out in the walls. He walked forward to examine the first picture. It had a little text in Elvish hanging beside it, which he couldn’t read. Instead, he looked at the picture. It showed a young girl facing away.

 ** _“There’s two people in this picture,”_** she said, **_“A young girl and an old woman. Can you see them both?”_**

He frowned. _“Old woman? I see the young girl looking away, where does the old woman come–”_

His jaw dropped. He tilted his head slightly to the side, and suddenly saw an eye in the young girl’s ear, and a crooked nose in the line of her cheek. Then the rest of the ugly old woman’s head came into view, looking sternly at them. “Impossible…”

He could feel Skyfire’s amusement at the edge of his mind. She turned away from the two women and walked to the next picture.

She led him past all the pictures hanging on the walls, and with every new one he paused and blinked as his mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He saw an oliphaunt with more legs on the ground than came out of his body. Black-and-white lines that appeared slanted but, when you put something straight underneath them, turned out to be straight as an arrow. Endless stairs that made his eyes hurt as he tried to follow them and, despite clear differences in height, kept coming back to the starting point. Every time they came to a new picture, he got dizzy as he tried to figure out what was so fundamentally wrong with it that it didn’t fit within his realm of understanding.

Throughout these, he drew small comfort from the fact that, no matter the tricks they played on his eyes, they were just pictures. Endless stairs couldn’t exist in reality, it would violate the very rules of possibility. As confusing as they were, they were fictional, and as such he could, in a way, accept them and incorporate them into his world view without changing the rules of said view.

Not so when they moved on to the objects.

It was as if the Elves had pulled impossible things from their pictures and plopped them into reality, forcing him to acknowledge their existence, no matter how warped he thought it was. He saw a large glass beetle in a tall translucent box, falling down slowly to break upon hitting the bottom of the box, glittering fragments flying in all directions. The next moment, time seemed to reverse, the pieces were coming back together and rose, and by the time they reached the top of the box, the beetle was whole again. Only to descend and start the entire cycle all over again, breaking and healing for eternity. He saw sculptures depicting creatures so strange, his companion seemed positively ordinary in comparison, and that was saying something. And many more miracles that he couldn’t even begin to describe, that he could only gape at in astonishment because they were _impossible_.

 _Things that should be impossible but aren’t._ Skyfire’s words ghosted through his head as he stood looking at a stone that changed colour, depending on the distance from which it was viewed. With everything he saw, those words took on a new meaning, and they forced him to substantially expand his definition of what was possible.

He couldn’t say how much time they had spent here, though it couldn’t have been as long as he felt because Skyfire hadn’t adjusted the mirror at the entrance since they arrived. Eventually, they arrived at the last item, a flower. When in the light, it was a light blue, with a yellow heart. When Skyfire held a wing over it, blocking the reflected beam of sunlight, it withered, turned black and died, only to revive once the shadow was removed and the sunlight hit it again.

He was trying it himself, holding a hand over the flower and watching the colours drain from the crumpling petals, and then watching them return as soon as he pulled his hand back, when she suddenly asked: **_“When are we leaving?”_**

He looked at her. She looked back, her eyes black. He opened his mouth and closed it again. In truth, he’d been asking himself that same question with increasing frequency over the last couple of days. He’d managed to soothe his conscience every time by telling himself that there was no hurry, that the Dragon had slept for sixty years and would sleep for a while to come, that as long as he had the key and the map no one would be able to enter the Mountain, and until they knew what to do, instead of camping at the foot of the Mountain, wasn’t it better to stay here, basking in the hospitality of the Elves?

Yet he found he couldn’t give her all these reasons. The cave had left him off guard, had led him to question things he had always taken for granted. The nagging doubt he had suppressed at the back of his head manifested itself tenfold, and he couldn’t give her an answer.

 ** _“Show Elrond the map,”_** she half suggested, half ordered.

“It is the legacy of my people,” he defended immediately, speaking up for the first time. “It is no business of the Elves.”

“It’s useless,” she retorted sharply. “It holds a secret; you can’t find it, I can’t find it, Gandalf can’t find it. Elrond might.”

He said nothing. She ploughed on. “The Elves are growing tired of our presence here. They will make us leave, and we’ll have gotten no further in this Quest.”

“They wouldn’t,” he growled. “They value their famed hospitality too much.”

She scoffed, a sharp sound that echoed away into the cave. “Make no mistake, if they want us gone, they’ll not rest until we’re out. O, they won’t drive us out on swordpoint, but very quietly, very subtly, they’ll force us to go, you’ll see.”

That was…concerning. But he couldn’t give in, it went against everything he believed. “The Elves will never help us, unless for their own gain. Once they discover the secret of the map, they’ll keep us here and claim Erebor’s riches, _our birthright_ , for themselves.”

Without realizing it, he had started to speak louder, and in the silence that fell he could hear the echoes of his own words coming back at them.

She looked at him, her eyes unreadable. “Hasn’t this cave shown you that what we believe to be possible and impossible doesn’t necessarily have to be so?”

Suspicion grew in his stomach. “Is that why you brought me here?”

She looked away and refused to meet his eyes.

He thought about what she had said. As much as he hated to admit it, she had a point. The map was useless to him, as long as he couldn’t discover the secret it held. There was a very good chance Elrond would be able to discover that secret. And it was true: what he had seen in this cave stretched beyond the limits of his wildest imaginations, beyond what he’d thought possible, and yet it was real and tangible before him. Could it be that what he had taken as truth about Elves wasn’t the truth either?

 ** _“If it helps,”_** she said softly, hesitatingly, **_“leaving Rivendell against the wishes of the Elves isn’t impossible either.”_**

He looked at her, doubting. _“Can you promise me, that if we wish to leave and they wish us to stay, we can get out? You will get us out?”_

She looked at him, unblinking. **_“Yes.”_**

* * *

_“How did it go?”_

She didn’t even ask how the Wizard knew what she and Thorin had been doing this afternoon. Somehow, he always knew everything, even though she knew he hadn’t been anywhere nearby and she was fairly sure no one had seen them. **_“I think there’s a chance.”_**

_“Well, that’s something.”_

She was curled up on the branch of a tree, watching the sun set. After leaving the Hall of Eye-blinking, Thorin excused himself from both her presence and the presence of everyone else, and had wandered off by himself to think. She and the rest of the Company, although she was the only one who knew, were awaiting his decision.

She wondered what the Dwarf would decide. She did think there was a bigger chance of him accepting Elrond’s help now than there had been this morning. Truthfully, if Thorin was the leader she thought he was, she was pretty sure he would look beyond his preconceptions against the Elves and be able to accept their help for the good of the Quest.

If he didn’t, she had misjudged his character and he wasn’t a leader she wanted to follow. For herself, she had decided that if he clung too much to the past to be able to make the right choices for the future, she would leave.

She hadn’t told him this, of course.

* * *

It didn’t come to that.

When Thorin returned, she could see his decision clearly in his mind. He ignored the Company’s questions, marched straight to the nearest Elf and requested a meeting with Elrond. While he waited, he was joined by Gandalf, Balin and Bilbo, and when the Elf returned to tell them that Lord Elrond could receive them now and if they would follow him, please? the four of them set off together.

She didn’t go with them. Her part was done, it was up to Gandalf to steer the meeting in the right direction. The four of them would surely share the important things with the rest of them, and if she still had questions she could always ask the Wizard. Instead, she stayed behind with the rest of the Company.

She considered telling them to start packing, but decided that would attract too much attention and would tip the Elves off that they were planning to make an unexpected break for it. She did keep an eye on them to make sure no one left the rooms, because she didn’t want to have to track down stragglers when haste was required. She also planned out an escape route, because Thorin had not been wrong about the Elves wanting to prevent them from continuing the Quest.

* * *

When the reduced quartet returned, she was ready, having been given instructions by Gandalf minutes before. She had caught some confusing stuff about last light and a thrush knocking, but there were other things taking priority right now.

It was testimony to the discipline within the group that when Thorin returned, cut off all questions and ordered everyone to start packing because they were leaving, no one complained or protested.

She didn’t have anything to pack, of course, so she stayed out of the way in the tree, keeping a lookout. After a few minutes though, Thorin called her down and told her to go get provisions. She nodded and flew off towards the kitchens, for once obeying an order without question.

* * *

Perhaps thirty minutes later, she crept through Rivendell, changing her fur to blend in with the various shades of grey decorating her surroundings, trailed by thirteen Dwarves and a Hobbit who were trying to mimic her silence and stealth with various, but for their doing probably quite admirable degrees of success. Bilbo, she didn’t fail to notice, was quietest.

She was glad the sky was cloudy and there was only a crescent moon. The brighter the moon and the clearer the sky, the more active Elves tended to be. As it was, there were only a few out and about and by sensing their faer, she was able to avoid them quite easily.

She had spent quite some time exploring Rivendell when she was younger, with the result that she knew probably more about its shortcuts and hidden ways than the average Elf who lived here. Except Elrond, of course, she thought as she tipped around a corner, he had built the place after all. But he was currently occupied. Gandalf had taken care of that.

She couldn’t help but admire the trust the Company placed in their leader and, indirectly, in her. As far as she knew, none of them had been told why they were tiptoeing about in the middle of the night, and although most probably suspected they were continuing the Quest, they were currently following her without the slightest idea where she was leading them.

She smiled in relief as their final destination came into view: a wall separating Rivendell from the rest of their trip. She jumped onto the wall, took a moment to make sure they went unnoticed, and lowered her tail down. The wall was too high to climb, Dwarf or Elf, which meant it probably wouldn’t be immediately suspected as their way out.

Ori caught on first, as she had expected he would. He grabbed her tail securely, just above the knob, like a few days ago. She heaved him over the wall and let him down carefully on the other side.

Bilbo was next, also as expected. The rest of the Dwarves caught onto the idea quickly, and one by one, she hoisted them over the wall. Bombur required some pushing from below, and by the time the last one was over her tail hurt, but at least Rivendell was still quiet.

She jumped down amongst murmuring. Apparently, they had somehow gotten the idea that once they were on the other side of the wall, they could not be heard anymore. Thorin put an end to that very quickly, then turned to her. “Now where?”

“Follow me,” she whispered. They had to double back around Rivendell for a little bit in order to reach the pad that would take them up and into the mountains. Halfway there, she began hearing hurried footsteps and shouting from inside, and she knew their absence had been noticed. She moved a little faster, but that caused Bombur’s pots and pans to start clanging against each other very loudly, so she abandoned that plan, instead pressing herself closer against the wall so that when someone looked over it, he had to look straight down to see her.

Once the mountainpath was finally in sight, she pointed it out and slowed to a halt, counting the Dwarves as they hurried past her. She counted fourteen, so they were complete.

Thorin was the last to go by. He only glanced at her for a moment in passing, but she heard it anyway, quiet and flighty as a breath of wind. _“Thank you.”_

She smiled, took a last glance backward at Rivendell, and went after them, silent as a moonshadow.


	25. Twenty-four

**24**

Once they were out of sight of the valley, she filled the Dwarves in on the plan as Gandalf had explained it to her. The getting out part had succeeded without a hitch, and now they were to get to the mountains as fast as they could and wait there for the Wizard to rejoin them.

After that, Thorin recited the instructions on the map: Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks, and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.

Turned out the message had been written in moon-runes, which explained how Gandalf could have missed them. It was quite a stroke of luck that on the exact evening Thorin had decided to show Elrond the map, the moon required to read it was shining in the sky (even though Elrond had no doubt attributed it to fate and the will of the Valar).

Upon asking, she learned that ‘Durin’s Day’ was the start of the Dwarves’ new year, and that on that day the last moon of autumn and the first sun of winter were up in the sky together. It was the middle of summer right now.

Well, then that was pretty straightforward. They’d better hurry.

Unfortunately, stealing fourteen horses out from under the noses of the Elves unnoticed had been a bit much to ask for, so that now progress was even slower than it had been before, even more so because they had entered a rougher landscape and the paths were not all that threadable. The Company stretched into a long trail on the swerving rocky paths, and there was always someone that was slowest and had to be waited upon. Dwarves were sturdy creatures, but every day there was one that stubbed his toe or sprained his ankle, and Oín was kept busy every evening trying to fix him up enough to allow the unfortunate Dwarf to keep up the pace the next day. She spent at least an hour every day looking for herbs to aid the healer in that process.

Truly, since Thorin drove them on from daybreak to early in the evening, most of the hunting and gathering of food and other such necessities fell to her anyway. Had she previously spent a few days a week just walking and talking beside the Company, she now flew ahead, behind or above them all day, looking for easy pickings to try and fill the Dwarves’ perpetually bottomless stomachs. When they finally stopped, Bombur usually made stew or soup with whatever she had found that day. The glorious meals he’d served them in Rivendell were a swiftly fading memory.

She didn’t really mind. The time they had spent in Rivendell had brought them together a little too closely for her liking, and she used the ever-present food shortage as an excuse to leave them alone all day and put some distance back between her and the Company. She didn’t think they really noticed. When Thorin finally called his feverish march a night, most of them were too tired to do anything but eat and sleep anyway. And she was often gone the next day before they were well and truly awake.

She was starting to get worried about said leader though. She couldn’t quite lay a claw on what the problem was, but ever since they left Rivendell Thorin had been moody, grumpy and short-tempered, that is to say, more so than usual. He seemed obsessed with getting to the Lonely Mountain in time, and in trying to achieve this drove them on so mercilessly that she was afraid some of the Dwarves might drop dead from exhaustion very soon if he kept it up. She wondered what was keeping _him_ walking apart from pure determination, because he was often the last to go to sleep and the first to wake, and the bags beneath his eyes were growing more prominent by the day.

A few weeks after leaving Rivendell, he broached the subject to her himself. She was glad he did, because Thorin’s temper was bubbling close to the surface these days, and she had been trying to think up a way to approach the subject without getting a snap back for her troubles.

It was one evening after the sun had gone down, and they were the only ones still awake by a dying fire. The rest of the Company were fast asleep, some with bowls still in their hands. Bombur hadn’t even managed to finish his dinner before conking out, something highly irregular for him. Sometimes, increasingly often, she caught herself thinking why she still bothered with the entire Company. It seemed to her like she was doing all the work, hunting and feeding them and now she had to keep watch too, because right now she doubted an approaching army would wake them. And tomorrow they would get up and drag themselves another distance across the unfriendly terrain and the whole cycle would repeat itself.

Apparently Thorin had been thinking along the same lines, because without any indication he asked: _“Could you fly us to Erebor?”_

She tried to hide her surprise at being addressed out of the blue, glad her eyes were closed so he didn’t see them changing colour, and responded: **_“No.”_**

He seemed more annoyed than surprised by her answer. _“You can’t or you won’t?”_

She opened her eyes and raised her head to look at him. **_“Both. I can’t fly the lot of you to the Lonely Mountain before the end of autumn without falling halfway out of the sky from exhaustion and I won’t because I didn’t sign up on this trip as a ferry.”_**

She got nothing but a grunt back, but she went on anyway.

 ** _“But while we’re on the subject…”_** she began carefully, watching him for signs of danger like a hawk. **_“What has gotten into you lately?”_**

 _“What do you mean?”_ he asked defensively, looking away from her and into the night.

She got up and walked over to sit down in front of him, filling his sight. **_“You know what I mean. Ever since we left Rivendell, you’ve been sulking and brooding and restless, driving everyone up from dawn till dusk like cattle. I don’t think you’ve noticed, but if you were to run into trouble one of these days some of your warriors couldn’t deliver a fight to save their skins. And if we managed to survive this ridiculous pace you’re setting, what were you planning to do? Camp on the Dragon’s doorstep for weeks? Why are you pushing so hard?”_**

He refused to answer, hiding his thoughts from her, but she knew him well enough by now to be able to read him like a book. At least the global lines of it. He seemed to be beating himself up over waiting too long to ask Elrond to read his map. He felt they had spent precious time in Rivendell, and now he was trying to win that time back.

Okay, she could understand that, to a certain degree. She tried to make up for her past mistakes too. But she had buried the things that she could not change, while he was allowing it to crawl under his skin and eat him up.

 ** _“You know the past is in the past, and you can’t change it, do you?”_** she said.

 _“Of course I know that,”_ he growled. She waited, sensing he wasn’t finished yet. After a long pause, he went on hesitantly. _“But I can’t help feeling that…if only I’d been less proud…We might have had a better chance of reaching Erebor in time.”_

Distantly, she was surprised about his sudden opening up. But she had her thoughts elsewhere. She looked away from him for a time, thinking, trying to order her thoughts. **_“I understand that. But you have got to slow it down a bit. Racing as you have been isn’t doing anyone any good. We still have a few months to get there. Unless we suffer major delays, I’d say we can still make it.”_**

She waited for a moment, but his expression didn’t clear enough yet. She went on. **_“I promised to do everything in my power to get you to the Mountain in time, and I think we’ve established by now that I’ve got quite a lot in said power. We’ve still got a good shot at getting to the Mountain before the end of autumn. And if by some chance we don’t get there in time, we’ll still be fine. Things will work themselves out. In my experience, one way or another, they always do.”_**

Despite himself, he felt that the weight that had been resting on his stomach ever since they left Rivendell had lessened slightly. He remembered his conversation with Elrond and, blocking that memory from her since he was quite sure she wouldn’t take kindly to him talking about her behind her back, said: _“You’re very wise.”_

She smiled, perhaps the first deep, genuine smile he’d seen of her. It reached her eyes. **_“It is only my view of the world as I see it. If that is wisdom, use it to your advantage.”_**

* * *

The next day, Thorin called it quits when they still had a few hours of daylight left. They had covered less distance than the day before, but the Dwarves were a lot more lively for it. Bombur had enough energy left to roast the three fat rabbits she’d brought, cook some vegetables and add some of the provisions they had taken with them from Rivendell, and for the first time in a few weeks they enjoyed a well-prepared and delicious meal. Morale rose like the embers flying up into the night from their merrily crackling campfire. She wasn’t the only one on effective guard duty that night.

Over the course of a few days, Thorin slowed down. Most of the Dwarves were too happy with the change to wonder what had caused it, but some of the older Dwarves had approached Thorin to ask, indirectly, where this sudden change of heart had come from. As far as she knew, he’d only told them he had noticed the tempo was breaking them up and hadn’t mentioned the part she had played in it. She was fine with that.

She was still trying to figure out how best to handle the Dwarves. On the one hand, she appreciated their company and had to admit she was straying into the territory of friendship with some of them. And she was happy to learn that Thorin listened to her well enough that she could persuade him into doing something when none of the other Dwarves could.

On the other hand, she couldn’t forget what had happened the first and last time she got too close to someone. Every so often, that weight came crashing into her stomach and she told herself that, for her peace of mind and their safety, she had to keep her distance from them. She would then spend a day or two trying to avoid them and talking to them as little as possible, which was hard when the Company didn’t understand it was for their own good and kept engaging her in conversation. She had gone too far with them to keep snarling and growling at them and invariably she found herself chatting merrily until reality came crashing down and she realized _Damnit…I’ve done it again._

The cycle would then repeat itself.

Of course, this variating behaviour did not go unnoticed. Most of the Dwarves had learned by now, after she’d scared a few of them out of their wits, not to ask too many personal questions. She was fine with talking about her powers, and she had even started gently trying to educate them about the wilderness they travelled through (with varying success), but although she was now quite familiar with the personal lives of at least five of the Dwarves, hers was still dark and foggy. She was perfectly fine with keeping it that way.

Thorin was of course the one to break this unspoken rule.

* * *

They were, as per usual, the last ones awake. Thorin was on watch, and would wake Bofur in a few hours to relieve him. She was lying down with her eyes closed, not yet asleep.

_“Hey…”_

Opening her eyes or making a sound was too much trouble right now, so she just responded with a stray of though that could, with some goodwill, be explained as a sign that she wasn’t really interested in having a conversation right now, but he could continue without major danger of losing a limb.

_“You’ve been acting strange lately.”_

He could feel she was a little more awake now, though you’d never have known just by looking at her. She waited, guarded, for him to elaborate.

_“One moment you’re cheerful and happy, talking and joking with everybody; the next, you’re pushing everybody away and you’re off for hours on your own.”_

He watched closely for danger signs, but after a moment a puff of smoke came out of her nostrils. **_“Guess you’re not as oblivious to your surroundings as I thought, then.”_**

Ignoring the jibe, he went on. _“I can’t get the measure of you. I need to know if I can count on you, if we get into a dangerous situation.”_

She let out a low rumble, an indication that she didn’t appreciate his remark. She opened her eyes and looked at him orange. ** _“I think I’ve shown you just what use I am in a dangerous situation. Who saved your asses when you ran into those trolls? Me. Who shook you awake and got you out of Rivendell? Me! I told you, Thorin Oakenshield, that I would get you to the Lonely Mountain, and I intend to keep that promise. All I ask in return is a little privacy, and if that is too much for you, then I will wish you good fortune and leave.”_**

She waited for an answer, but when she didn’t get one, she closed her eyes and turned her head away from him.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He noticed that she didn’t mention the one-fifteenth of the treasure she was entitled to. Come to think of it, from what he knew, or thought he knew, about her, she didn’t seem at all interested in gold or riches. Why had she gone with them, if not for gold?

He knew Gandalf was the one to add her to his Company. Maybe it was the will of the Valar that she come with them.

**_“Do you believe in gods, Thorin?”_ **

Startled, it took him a moment to get his thoughts in order. Distantly, he wondered whether it was a coincidence that he had been thinking of the subject she asked about or if she had followed his line of thoughts.

 _“What gods do you mean?”_ he asked, just to get the meaning of her question clear.

**_“You know, Ilúvatar, the Valar, higher beings in general. Do you believe there are any?”_ **

_“Of course,”_ he said. What other answer was there?

**_“I don’t.”_ **

He blinked, not understanding. _“What do you mean, you don’t?”_ he finally managed, incredulous.

 ** _“I don’t believe there are higher beings in the world,”_** she clarified calmly, as if she hadn’t just said something that defied one of the major pillars his world was built upon. She waited patiently while he tried to align his thoughts again.

 _“Why not?”_ he at last threw out.

She flicked one of her ears. **_“I believe what I see. I have never seen anything that, to me at least, indicates the presence of some god or other.”_**

_“Just because you can’t see something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”_

She rolled her eyes at him. **_“Please don’t take the wind as an example. You can see the effects of the wind. You can see grass bending and you can hear it howling through the branches of trees. You can’t see the influence of a god.”_**

 _“It is only by praying to Mahal that we are granted victories on the battlefield!”_ he retorted. _“It is only through destiny determined by the Valar that I left the Lonely Mountain alive!”_

**_“If they’re so great, why didn’t they stop Smaug from rampaging Erebor in the first place? Shouldn’t a god be more powerful than a dragon?”_ **

He didn’t respond, too stupefied, mouth hanging open, and she went just a little further. **_“Certainly a god should be more powerful than an Orc, and yet there was no intervention from above when Azog decided to lop your grandfather’s head off!”_**

That raked up an ancient grief, and she could see from the tears gathering in his eyes and the anger boiling up inside him that she had gone too far. She calmed down a little.

“I’m sorry,” she said, eyes turning turquoise in apology.

He didn’t offer a reply, turning away from her and shaking his head. She saw the turmoil inside him. He was strong, she knew, and he would get through this all right. She just hoped he would be able to sleep tonight, though.

Neither of them said anything else that night.


End file.
